10 Toughest Movie Characters

Actor: Clint Eastwood
Movie: Dirty Harry (1971) and sequels

"I know what you're thinking. "Did he fire six shots or only five?" Well, to tell you the truth, in all this excitement I kind of lost track myself.
But being as this is a .44 Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world, and would blow your head clean off, you've got to ask yourself a question:
Do I feel lucky? Well, do ya, punk?"

Who can argue with the most legendary tough-guy line in the history of motion pictures? the lines of the lines. The one that gave the .44 Magnum its
notorious name, making it perhaps the most commonly known handheld weapon model in the history. "Dirty" Harry Francis Callahan is a fictional San
Francisco Police Department inspector in the films Dirty Harry (1971), Magnum Force (1973), The Enforcer (1976), Sudden Impact (1983), and
The Dead Pool (1988) all played by one of my favorite tough guys, Clint Eastwood. I vote for Harry Callahan as the number one tough character in the
history of motion pictures.

Actor: Alain Delon
Movie: Le Samourai (1967)

The nearly mute perfectionist hitman who "religiously adheres to a strict code of duty" in Jean-Pierre Melville's Le Samouraï is my second choice for
the subject. Costello is not just tough. He is icy cold tough. He lives in a Spartan apartment whose interior contains a neatly arranged line of mineral water bottles, cigarettes on a bookcase, as well as a little bird in a gray cage in the middle of the room. The film opens with a long take of Costello lying awake on his bed, smoking, as the following text appears on-screen, attributed to an ancient samurai writing entitled "The Book of Bushido", which Melville later on admitted to be completely fabricated:

There is no solitude greater than the samurai's, unless perhaps it be that of a tiger in the jungle.

Actor: Humphrey Bogart
Movie: High Sierra (1941)

The robber gangster Roy 'Mad Dog' Earle was Raoul Walsh's tragic hero in an early heist film noir film written by John Huston and W.R. Burnett from a
novel by Burnett. Starring Ida Lupino and Humphrey Bogart High Sierra was shot on location at Whitney Portal, halfway up Mount Whitney. The film has entered the motion picture pantheon for its climatic final scenes, as the cops pursue 'Mad Dog' Earle from Lone Pine up to the foot of the mountain before they kill him. My vote goes for Roy as the third toughest movie character of all times.

Actor: Mickey Rourke
Movie: Sin City (2005)

My favorite character in the Sin City (2005) movie adaptation and one of the leading characters from the graphic novel series Sin City, created by
Frank Miller. Marv works the streets of Basin City ("Sin City") performing jobs for people he feels deserve help. He can be very mean and extremely
cruel when preforming his questioning routines with the assistance of his sawing tools and tourniquet set. Yet he usually does that to protect a lady, so that gives him an additional point. The 2005 neo-noir anthology film written, produced and directed by Miller and Robert Rodriguez was the first time for me to meet Marv. I must admit at the time I though this guy does it and gets my "toughest of the toughest" vote but now it gets a 4.

Actor: Gene Hackman
Movie: The French Connection (1971)

The Obsessive-Compulsive New York City police detective portrayed by Gene Hackman in The French Connection is a model for persistence and not letting anything take you off your course. Other than being really tough and preforming exceptional "running after the bad guys until they die" skills, The Jimmy "Popeye" Doyle character is actually based on a real life New York City detective named Eddie Egan. I bet Egan was tough as well.

Actor: Robert Mitchum, Robert De Niro
Movie: Cape Fear (1962 & 1991 re-make)

Here is a guy you wouldn't like to get into an argument with. The villain of the John D. MacDonald's novel The Executioners, the 1962 film adaption Cape Fear and Scorsese's 1991 remake is definitely one of the meanest toughest hoods any of us had ever seen. If you haven't met this guy yet, believe me when I tell you he is tough. First played by Robert Mitchum and then again by Robert De Niro (in an Academy Award-nominated performance) in the remake, Max Cady ranked his way to the 28th place on the American Film Institute's list of the top 50 movie villains of all time.

According to Wikipedia, the scene where Mitchum attacks Polly Bergen's character on the houseboat was almost completely improvised. Mitchum rubbing the eggs on Bergen was not scripted and Bergan's reactions were real. Bergen suffered back injuries from being knocked around many times during this scene and "felt the impact of the 'attack' for days". Both Mitchum's and De Niro's characters are tough. Yet I vote for the Mitchum one. Being more realistic, I find it more effective in my opinion.

Actor: Humphrey Bogart (Unable to use his icon twice)
Movie: The Maltese Falcon (1930)

Created by Dashiell Hammett, Sam Spade is the tough private eye of the 1930 novel The Maltese Falcon and the first film-noir movie ever made written and directed by John Huston. In those days there were not many tougher than Spade as played by Bogart. "Spade has no original. He is a dream man in the sense that he is what most of the private detectives I worked with would like to have been and in their cockier moments thought they approached."
(Dashiell Hammett on Sam Spade)

Actor: Charles Bronson
Movie: Death Wish (1974) and Sequels

Based on a 1972 novel by Brian Garfield, Paul Kersey is the main character in the series of motion pictures all titled Death Wish; Death Wish (1974); Death Wish II (1982); Death Wish 3 (1985); Death Wish 4: The Crackdown (1987) and; Death Wish V: The Face of Death (1994). Kersey was kind of a nice guy before he metamorphosed into a serial killer. It was quite a breakthrough in terms of the type of things a popular movie "hero" character can do and still have its sequels. Besides, Bronson was always tough and we can't have this list without at least one of the amazing characters he played.

Actor: Al Pacino
Movie: Scarface (1983)

Scarface is a 1983 American crime film directed by Brian De Palma, written by Oliver Stone, produced by Martin Bregman and starring Al Pacino as Tony Montana. A contemporary remake of the original 1932 film of the same name, the film tells the story of Tony Montana, a Cuban refugee who comes to Miami in 1980 as a result of the Mariel Boatlift, and becomes a drug cartel kingpin during the cocaine boom of the 1980s. The movie chronicles his rise to the top of Miami's cocaine empire. The film is dedicated to Howard Hawks and Ben Hecht, the director and principal screenwriter of the original 1932 film, respectively.

Al Pacino is hypnotic as Montana with his thick Cuban accent, his ruthlessly violent temper, and his psychotic obsession with his little sister. Tony's rise to the top must be followed by a fall from grace and the crash is as terrifying as it is vivid and arresting. Tony insists on going out in a blaze of glory. This movie has become a part of Pop Culture.

Actor: James Cagney
Movie: White Heat (1949)

How can you have a tough guy list with 2 characters represented by Bogart and not have Cagney included? He played a lot of tough guys in his career, like in the Public Enemey, but my vote goes for his portrayal of the deranged, ruthless, criminal with a mother complex, Cody Jarrett in the movie, White Heat.

Given to bouts of debilitating headaches, Cody is conforted by his equally crooked mother with a shot of whiskey and the toast, "top of the World". We later discover Jarrett's father died in an insane asylum. It appears Cody may have inheritated some of his symptons.

Jarrett's gang rob a train and kill several of the train crew. He confesses to a lesser crime he did not committ to give him an alibi. While serving his prison sentence, Cody discovers that Ma is dead and he goes beserk. The guards drag him off to the infirmary and diagnose him with psychosis.

Jarrett escapes with some cellmates in a getaway car. When one associate locked in the trunk complains that its stuffy and he needs some air, Jarrett says,"Oh, stuffy, huh? I'll give ya a little air." While calmly munching on a chicken leg, he empties his gun into the trunk. He proceeds to gun down the man he thought responsible for Ma's death, then carries out a plot to steal the payroll of a chemical plant. That is the scene of the final showdown. With the police closing in, Cody flees to the top of a gigantic, globe-shaped gas tank. When he gets shot several times, he starts firing into the tank and shouts, "Made it, Ma! Top of the world!" just before it goes up in a massive explosion.