Magnificent Bastard/Film: Difference between revisions

** {{spoiler|And he even '''tells her''' how and by which means he is going fake his own death!}}

* Frank Abagnale in ''[[Catch Me If You Can]]'' is a born [[Con Man]] whose first relatively harmless scheme involved impersonating his French teacher, fooling the entire school for weeks. His later criminal actions consist of acquiring millions of dollars by writing fraudulent checks, sending out fake letters, and posing as air plane pilots, doctors, and lawyers, all to live a lavish lifestyle spent in expensive hotels, throwing parties, and sleeping with numerous women he seduces, as well as a high-class prostitute whom he tricks into paying him for the night spent with her. When the FBI's Financial Crimes unit starts pursuing him, Frank cleverly manages to avoid capture numerous times, such as performing a [[Bavarian Fire Drill]] that convinces FBI Agent Carl Hanratty that Frank is a Secret Service agent, and in his most audacious scheme, smuggling himself through an airport filled with FBI agents by recruiting a group of handsome stewardesses to distract the men supposed to be watching out for him. Although the law ultimately catches up with him, Frank is a [[Lovable Rogue]] who is so good at what he does that he's able to elude the authorities for years and all before he was even 21.

* Kuwabatake Sanjuro from ''[[Yojimbo]]''. Not only does he play two rival gangs like fiddles, causing them both to collapse with little suspicion drawn to himself, he's able to turn {{spoiler|his capture, which he didn't plan}} to his advantage.

* The enigmatic, philosophical [[Villain Protagonist]] of ''[[Collateral]]'', "Vincent", is a ruthless yet suave [[Professional Killer]], tasked with eliminating witnesses to the crimes of drug lord Felix Reyes-Torrena. Bribing taxi driver Max Durocher to unwittingly assist him, Vincent has Max transport him while he murders his targets. [[Affably Evil|Genuinely affable]], Vincent respectfully listens to the story of a jazz club owner before offing him and visits Max's sick mother in the hospital, even bringing her flowers. Adapting when Max destroys the files on his targets, Vincent has Max retrieve a new copy from Felix, both keeping his anonymity and leading the police to mistakenly believe Max is him. Fatally wounded by Max while hunting his last target, Vincent chooses to [[Face Death with Dignity|calmly accept his fate]], giving Max some parting words before passing.

* Bricktop from ''[[Snatch]]'', is really a near miss. He doesn't do much for convoluted planning, but he's a [[Complete Monster]] who nonetheless is [[Laughably Evil|quite funny]], carries himself ([http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3qy4Zv4snI and gives speeches]) with style, is ruthless and willing to kill anyone in a second, and generally always seems to have control of the situation and be one step ahead of other characters. (For example take the following scene: Turkish has failed to come through on a favor to Bricktop and cost Bricktop a lot of money. Turkish runs back to his office, hoping he can get to his safe where he has enough money to flee Bricktop. Bricktop and his goons are already waiting there, they catch Turkish by surprise and [[No, Mr. Bond, I Expect You to Dine|have a surprisingly civilized conversation]] where Bricktop tells Turkish what Turkish will have to do in order to make things right, all while Turkish expects Bricktop to kill him at any moment. Then, just before leaving, Bricktop stops on his way out the door and says "Now, I know you came back here to open your safe" * Bricktop pushes aside a picture hiding the safe* "Well, now you can open it." The next scene begins with Bricktop counting all of Turkish's savings as he walks out to the car, knowing that he's left Turkish no escape and now virtually owns Turkish). Unfortunately, Bricktop's lack of planning comes back to bite him in the end, as he is badly, badly, [[Out-Gambitted]] by the movie's resident [[Wild Card|Wild Cards]].

* In ''[[Wild Things]]'', Suzie Toller is a teenage girl from the wrong side of the tracks, masking her genius-level intellect by appearing as white trash. After one of her best friends was murdered by corrupt cop Ray Duquette, who then busted her on a bogus charge, Suzie vowed revenge. She hatches a plot wherein Suzie, her guidance counselor Sam Lombardo and Kelly Van Ryan, the rich girl Sam was sleeping with, are able to con Kelly's mother Sandra Van Ryan out of millions of dollars by having both girls falsely accuse Sam of rape, then cracking on the stand and opening the Van Ryans to a countersuit. Suzie also ordered Sam to draw Ray Duquette into the scheme by convincing him that he and Sam would get rid of both girls and split the money between the two of them instead of three-ways. After multiple betrayals and counter-betrayals and even faking her own death, at the end Suzie is the only conspirator left standing: a high-school drop-out responsible for several murders with a fortune safely stored away in an overseas account.

* The original working title for ''[[The Good, the Bad and the Ugly|The Good the Bad And The Ugly]]'' was ''The Three Magnificent Rogues''. If we assume 'rogues' is, here, an [[Unusual Euphemism]] for 'Bastards', it's a much more accurate description of the film's contents than ''The Good, The Bad and The Ugly'' ever was.

* Lee Woo-jin from ''[[Oldboy]]'' is this, through and through. Imprisoning Oh Dae-su for 15 years was only the ''start'' of his plan to ruin his life.

* While we're talking about Hackman, the man whose best roles are MB roles, let's not forget Mr. Royal Tenenbaum, Esq. of Wes Anderson's film of same name. A rotten husband who refuses to give his wife the divorce she requests, who worms his way back into the affections of his children and estranged wife by {{spoiler|faking cancer}}, who is likely 90% responsible for the failures of his prodigious offspring, who introduces his adopted daughter as "my adopted daughter," who shot his own son (while on the same team, a fact he cavalierly dismisses) with a BB gun, and who starts a fight with the estranged wife's new beau by using antiquated racial epithets is still, somehow, {{spoiler|mourned when he dies at the end of the film}}! A breathtaking and awe-inspiring bastardy magnificence.

* Lamar Burgess of ''[[Minority Report]]'' is the director and founder of the Precrime program, which uses premonitions extracted from three telepathic humans to predict and prevent all murder within the Washington D.C. area. However, at the same time Burgess is cunning enough to have literally made a career out of faking out Precrime; first by disguising Anne Lively's murder as an "echo", then by disguising all three visions of Crow's death as brown balls by putting the plan in action while Anderton was at the office, ensuring that he would either be arrested immediately or run, so when Crow would be found with the [[Orgy of Evidence]] that could lead Anderton to murder him, it looked planned by Anderton. When Federal Agent Danny Witwer catches on to him, Burgess promptly murders him, knowing that the system being deactivated will allow him to get away with it. The only thing Burgess couldn't see coming was Anderton figuring out everything in time to tell it all to his wife, even if he wasn't free to act on the information himself. However, even when his plot is exposed and faced with the impossible choice of either killing Anderton and going to prison or letting him live and discredit Precrime, Burgess manages to go out on his own terms by killing himself instead.

* Major Lemond in ''[[Air America]]'' pretty much openly admits to the visiting Senator Davenport that, yes, he is behind the drug smuggling operation in Laos, then delivers a pretty stinging [[Hannibal Lecture]] to him about how he'll still get away with everything.

{{quote| You can't touch me without cutting your own throat! You know why? Because [[Richard Nixon|the president]] loves my ass!}}

* In ''[[Escape from Alcatraz]]'', Frank Morris is a career criminal and prison escapee who is sent to Alcatraz Island to ensure his permanent imprisonment. While there, the stoic Morris hatches an escape plan with three other inmates that takes months of preparation, outwitting the guards repeatedly to get the necessary tools for the task and keeping their work a secret. Morris and two of his conspirators are the only men to escape Alcatraz and never be caught, only leaving behind a secret message for the Warden as a last taunt to his previous boast that no one will ever escape Alcatraz.

* Benedict from ''[[Last Action Hero]]'', an action-movie [[Big Bad]] who escapes into the Real World. Toward the end of the film, he becomes so [[Dangerously Genre Savvy]] that he's able to anticipate and exploit the genre-savviness of his rival Jack Slater.

* Xibalba from ''The Book Of Life'' is the ruler of the Land of the Forgotten who has grown bored of his rule. To this end, he proposes a wager with the Land of the Remembered ruler, La Muerte, concerning the love triangle between the childhood friends, Manolo and Joaquin, who tries to sway Maria’s heart. Taking Joaquin as his trump card, he disguises himself as a beggar and gave Joaquin a medal that made him immortal. Years later when Manolo almost made a heartfelt connection towards Maria, Xibalba sends his dual-headed snake staff to put Maria into a coma so that he could lead Manolo to believe that Maria is dead by manipulating his grief-stricken state and kills him. When La Muerte founds out that Xibalba has been cheating all along, he then proposes another wager towards Manolo by forcing him to fight all the bulls that his family had defeated in the past. Despite portrayed as a guy who doesn’t like to lose his bet most of the time, in the end of the day, he accepts his defeat gracefully by honoring the deal and reconcile with La Muerte in the end.

* In ''Rango'', Rattlesnake Jake is a terrifying mercenary who ends up employed by the corrupt mayor of the town as muscle, proving himself too vicious and threatening for even the mayor to fully rein in. Jake tears Rango down in front of the entire town by exposing his lies and drives him out before terrorizing the remaining townsfolk into obeying the mayor's scheme. Even despite his murderous temperament, Jake demonstrates a surprising amount of perception by seeing through Rango's ruse with a "hawk" comprised of hundreds of bats in a few seconds, and Rango finally proving himself a hero ends with Jake shamelessly acknowledging him as someone worthy of his respect — while personally dragging out the mayor to his doom for daring to double-cross him with one last [[Ironic Echo]]: "pretty soon, no one will believe you even existed."