BADASS WORLD CUP GROUP STAGE: ASIA

Won Bin in The Man From Nowhere, who didn't even make the cut, this list is so loaded with badasses

The incredibly serious business that is the Badass World Cup continues, with a biggie. If we're going to be real about ownage cinema, there are two continents where the vast majority of the greatest classics are made: North America (which I'm saving for last, and not out of dick-waving patriotism or anything either, just cuz facts is facts, people), and Asia. To indulge in one of the soccer metaphors I've been trying to keep to a minimum throughout the group stage coverage, in the same way that Australia was the underrated, dope Netherlands, Asia is Brazil. Aw yeah. Style. Grace. Joga Bonito. Is it a coincidence that Pele and Bruce Lee were born the same year? Fuck. No. They're within days of being the same astrological sign.

But yeah, Asia has a vast history of massively awesome violent movies, with some of the raddest motherfuckers ever to take their shirts off. The movie industries of Hong Kong, Tokyo, Mumbai, and more recently Seoul are not fucking around. This is a continent where you could stock a team of eleven starters and seven reserves that would fuck the whole shit of any other in the world up, and still not need to field the winner or the first couple also-rans. The point I'm trying to make is that Asia knows ownage.

This leads into a very important point, because I need to have a convenient argument shutter-downer in case someone's pissed off that I “forgot” something: there's a reason I've been sticking with the central soccer metaphor in this particular Cup. Even though the notion that, on any given Sunday, any team is capable of beating any other team originated in American football, it's true in association football too. I mean, unless you're playing Barcelona, in which case you're fucked. But the point is, whatever worthy I may have “forgotten” could just have run up against an ill-timed own goal in a qualifying match. And that's the story I'm sticking to.

So, without any further ado, let us to the runners-up:


9—Bolo, Enter The Dragon, China

Just as easily could have gone to Bolo's work as the baddies in Bloodsport or Double Impact, whose names escape me for the simple reason that when this motherfucker walks on screen, his name is Bolo. Those muscles, my friends, are large. The malevolence is at once universal in scope and extremely localized in focus, which is a fancy way of saying that when he puts his foot in your ass, he does so with the force of all the stars in a galaxy. And that's you fucked. Even though this was an American movie, tribute must be paid.

Bolo in Enter The Dragon is one of the rare instances of an actor being so badass that the only way he could be sufficiently scary is by naming his character after himself. Sure, he gets eliminated for being a bad guy and for getting killed—by John Saxon, no less; that's some shameful shit—but dude. Fuck thou not about. He's Bolo. Genuflect.


8—Kuwabatake Sanjuro, Yojimbo, Japan

Dude, it's Toshiro Mifune starring in The Glass Key. No more need be said.


7—Sivaji, Sivaji, India

No list of Asian badassery would be complete without Rajinikanth. He's so fucking great that when cinemas showing his movies have technical difficulties, audiences denied the ability to behold ownage riot. That's not an exaggeration, and that's the kind of shit that gives you the right to bill yourself as Superstar, as Rajni does at the top of Sivaji (another instance of character being named after actor, that's Superstar's born name).

Why Sivaji? This is why:



I do hope we don't have any arguments after watching that clip, because that would just be foolish. This low finishing position should not be construed as a slight against himself, it should be a sign that you should be fucking excited about what's to come.


6—Oh Dae-su, Oldboy, South Korea

Another instance where words fail me. Behold:



Just don't say anything. Bask.


5—(tie) Rajveer Shekhawat, Wanted / Sanjay Singhania, Ghajini, both India

The thing about Khans is that you can't pick just one. Here we have Salman and Aamir, respectively (Ed. Note: I'm not being twatty about Shahrukh, it's just that his particular brand of being awesome doesn't involve a whole lot of ownage in conventional terms). These two fairly recent displays of asskickery by two of the world's biggest movie stars are radically different in tone, levels of levity, just about every measurable metric. So it's apples and oranges, or Salmans and Aamirs, basically, but they both need to be shouted out.

Salman in Wanted has several moments of staggering ownage. He's so awesome that when the bad guy is about to kill his dad (Vinod Khanna, no stranger to ownage his own self), Pops out Dennis Hoppers Dennis Hopper in True Romance, giving an operatic pre-death speech about how MY SON, SALMAN KHAN, IS GOING TO FUCK YOU UP. When you own so hard that you can own someone when you're not even in the room, you own. Then, factor in Salman's earth-shattering swag when he rolls up to the final fight, and the way the fucking camera vibrates right before the final brutal bad guy death (Salman is so awesome the goddamn camera is nervous), well, that's enough evidence.

Aamir spends less time, by percentage, owning bad guys in Ghajini, but he's no less fearsome, in a completely different way. After the bad guys brain him, he has Guy-Pearce-in-Memento-itis and has to carry around all kinds of reminders about who the baddies are and why they have to die, but when he finally gets down to it at the climax, looking like a malignant Tony Parker with incomplete Vulcan makeup on, he cold fucks motherfuckers up. All while growling and keening bestially. Fucking with this guy ain't no multiple-choice question, unless “no” and “fuck no” count as different answers.

Again, the order of these is even more arbitrary than it usually is, because holy god is there an array of ownage on display on this list.


4—Ip Man, Ip Man 1 & 2, China

Oh, Donnie Yen. You wear elegant righteousness so well. In the first Ip Man movie, Donnie employs the “if you own the first nine guys first, the tenth one is a snap” method of owning ten guys at once with his bare hands, which is a really efficient one. I guess it's part of the esoterica in Wing Chun, because he's the only cat I've ever seen who managed to pull that one off.

There isn't really much more to say about Ip Man except oh, Donnie Yen. There's something to be said for a really well-filmed martial arts movie where the leading man is a genuinely great actor and yet also just breathtakingly graceful in his disbursal of ownage.


3—Jaidev, Sholay, India

Amitabh Bachchan. See, the thing about Sholay is, if you haven't seen it you literally do not have the language to describe how awesome it is—even if you know what कितने आदमी थे means, you don't know what it means til you see Sholay—and if you have seen it, all you can really do is sit around saying कितने आदमी थे to other people who've seen it with smoke coming out your ears.

Sholay's so fuckin good Amitabh isn't even the one who says that and he's still the baddest motherfucker alive. He's the lone exception to the “if you die, you disqualify” clause in the Badass World Cup regulations, because he dies so awesomely and for the cause of protecting true love and with unparalleled drama. Also, any lists about badasses in Asia without Amitabh Bachchan on it is just incomplete.


2—Cheng Chao-An, The Big Boss, China

Gets the nod over all other Bruce roles because, when Bruce finds out the bad guy and his fuckface son killed Hsu Chien and the whole house full of cousins (including the fat guy and the kid), he goes apeshit and fucking fucks people up. Bruce unleashing holy hell was always a sight to behold, but he spared no expense here, knifing bad guys, just generally wrecking their entire shit.

Also, Bruce fucks around too much in Way of the Dragon (and you can take the whole “but he kills Chuck Norris” argument and cram it in your ass, the cult of Chuck Norris enables too much stupid right-wing horseshit to even work on an ironic level), and gets killed in Fist of Fury, and Enter The Dragon is an American movie, so it'd be The Big Boss by default even if Bruce didn't rule ass six ways from Sunday in that joint.


1—Chen Zhen, Fist of Legend, China

JET LI OVER BRUCE??? ARE YOU MAD??? Naw, I ain't mad, I'm in a good-ass mood. Also, this is like the eighth time on these very pages that I've proclaimed Jet's superiority in Fist Of Legend to Bruce, so it's getting less controversial. All's I'm saying is, the Fujita fight. That's why Jet's the first runner-up in the most crowded bracket in the whole sumbitchin' Cup. Fujita's like a foot taller than Jet. He's immune to pain. He has superhuman strength. And Jet won. That's all y'all need to know.


And now, the top two. Oh, that's right. Asia sends two to the elimination round. As will North America in the final group stage. Why? Because, that's why. And so the winners are . . . drumroll . . .


Tequila & Tony, Hard-Boiled, China

Sure, they have guns, and almost nobody else on the list does, and it'd be tempting to say a guy who fucks shit up with his bare hands—or, like Jet, who can decapitate a guy with his belt—is more badass because he doesn't need the help, but let me refute that:



In a nutshell, Hard-Boiled has the best gun fights to ever be filmed. Most of that is John Woo walking around swinging his dick like a watch chain, but the thing that makes it more than just craft is the fact that Chow Yun-Fat and Tony Leung (the one who's the best actor in the world, not the one who might have actually fucked Jane March on camera) are so awesome in this. I mean, Chow Yun-Fat's Tequila (take note and keep going) is a cop who's a jazz musician, for shit's sake. Tony Leung makes a paper crane every time he kills someone, and his houseboat (take note and keep going) is full of hundreds of the fuckers.

The climax involves our heroes teaming up to defeat a villain so evil he looks like a white guy even though he's Chinese (the legendary half-British all-awesome Anthony Wong) by killing hundreds of bad guys who've taken over a hospital. It is, bar none, the greatest action climax ever. And that is why Tequila and Tony, despite all of the above-mentioned worthies. Easily the most fun of all the group stages in in the Cup so far.

Next up—whenever the hell I get around to it—the final group stage . . . North Afuckingmerica. Boo ya.

BADASS WORLD CUP GROUP STAGE: EUROPE

Oh, I bet you all thought these were over and done with and I'd just flaked. Au contraire, homes, we just gettin started. And now we get to the Big Three in terms of cinema: North America (where my sweet home Estados Unidos is), Asia, and today, Europe. This is not to slight Africa, Central/South America, or Australia, they just don't have as vast and well-funded national film industries as the Big Three. And of course, simple math dictates, more cinema, more potential ownage.

Europe is where cinema goes back the longest, too (fuck you, Edison, I'm Team Lumiere). The Czech Republic (and Slovakia, too, I guess, back when they used to be smushed together as Czechoslovakia) and Poland have produced some great pictures, Spain, Germany, Russia, Italy, France, and England a whole fucking lot of 'em. Some of the greatest directors to ever call action—in whatever language—are European, as are some of the greatest actors. It would stand to reason, by this rationale, that the problem in determining who reps Europe in the Badass World Cup should be sifting through all those badass performances. Right?

Actually, surprisingly, no. European cinema suffers from the same problem as South America and Africa do, on a much larger scale: their art cinema is fucking top-notch, but the ownage content of their shamelessly populist stuff is, percentage-wise, a bit low. The one notable exception to this, historically, has been France, because French people have historically had this massive crush on American B-movies, starting from Truffaut and Godard trying to intellectually justify geeking out like little kids over Don Siegel movies where dudes own other dudes with shotguns, on down to the present day of Luc Besson's EuropaCorp, an institution with the highest respect for le cinema d'ownage.

Despite these most valiant efforts by the French, European cinema remains largely a place where people get their asses handed to them by historical forces, fate, and totalitarian governments, rather than one large man with muscles and/or guns. This makes European movies great to drink a glass of wine to, no question, and that's important. We need movies where people grimly contemplate existence, or have secret affairs wherein their long-repressed passions take flight, or where we just sit there for three hours digging how pretty the Alps or the Riviera or the steppes are. Well, maybe we can trim that last kind, but you know what I'm saying. Ownage isn't the only game in town.

However, it is the subject of this competition. So, without any further ado, the also-rans:


6—Count Orlok, Nosferatu, Transylvania

Remember back when vampires weren't pretty hairless twinks who sparkled in the sunlight? Well this motherfucker right here is fucking old school. Max Schreck was a perfectly normal-looking old German dude, but he got in the room with F.W. Murnau, one of the earliest great duckfuckingly insane auteur filmmakers—and I say this with great reverence, F.W. Murnau was fucking crazy—and suddenly it's all like “get in this makeup, Schreck, we gotta make your ass look fuckin disgusting.” Oh man did it work, too. Nosferatu fucking owns if you can get a half-decent print (a big if these days, sadly, mostly due to Bram Stoker suing the shit out of Murnau for copyright infringement because Murnau decided to just steal the shit out of Dracula instead of paying for it). And Count Orlok is one of the all-time great baddies. He loses out in the Cup largely because a) he's a bad guy and b) he dies. Way to waste your immortality, fucko.


5—Vakulinchuk, Potemkin, USSR.

Vakulinchuk (left), some other dude with a dope mustache (right)

Because we need to shout the Russians out when we're talking about cinema. The great thing about Russians, if I may be permitted a little racism leeway to pay the cats a compliment, is their grim determination to soldier on with unglamorous shit. Thus, in the early years of cinema when everyone was figuring out the best ways to light chicks to make them look hot and messing around with visuals, the Russians were like, “fuck it, we're gonna invent editing.” Everyone else, taken aback, was like “okay, you guys do that, we're going to see if Gloria Swanson will show her tits.” (Ed. Note: the one or two women directors in the world were probably figuring out how to light Douglas Fairbanks' package, for a note of equality). But in '25, Sergei Eisenstein dropped Potemkin and everyone else ever since has been cutting based on the way he showed them how.

Now, the important thing to note with this entry is that the fact that one character stood out in Potemkin is a sign that Sergei Eisenstein fucked up. He was trying, and employing every last theoretical and technical bit of genius in his arsenal, to make a film glorifying the Soviet ideal, wherein each was part of an all rather than a unit on their own. Only problem is, he was such a good filmmaker that in the second episode in Potemkin, he ends up revealing how much the sailor leading the mutiny, Vakulinchuk, fucking owns.

The great thing about Vakulinchuk is that he doesn't spout all kinds of incongruous, fully-articulated Marx (like any number of dudes in Soviet movies), he's just like, “Fuck it, this shit's not right. These dudes running shit are assholes. Let's fucking get rid of them, even if it means our lives.” And Vakulinchuk lets himself get owned in the interest of the greater socialist struggle etc etc etc, leading inexorably to the Leninist revolution, but let's not let the fact that it ended up being for a questionable cause count too much against Vakulinchuk. The fucking guy is really cool, and we need to remember he was non-ideological, he was just engaged in a very simple struggle of “These guys are assholes, I'm not, so I'm going to stop them.” I always award style points for fighting the good fight. If this was college basketball, Vakulinchuk would be that one tiny-ass school with no guys who'll ever play in the NBA but who somehow make it to the quarterfinals every year. He doesn't win, but he endures his defeat with dignity and you'll be like “Hey, remember Vakulinchuk?” for a long time afterwards.


4—Michel, A bout de souffle, France

Okay, now we get to a more conventional portrayal of conventional ownage. You can't be talking about ownage in Europe without talking about Jean-Paul Belmondo, one of the great purveyors of same to ever breathe. Even if, in this, he's out of breath! BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!! (Ed. Note: fuck y'all, that was funny)

Michel owns a cop, fucks Jean Seberg, smokes a lot of cigarettes, does that awesome lip thing, and when he walks by the Bogart poster, he adjusts his shit to make sure his swag is tight. He's Jean-Paul Belfuckingmondo, people. There really ain't much more to say about the cat other than that he owns in just about the Frenchest way possible, which is ultimately why he's not repping Europe, because owning Frenchly means you get killed in the end, and although he dies one of the dopest deaths anyone ever pointed a camera at, still. Death is a bad move if you want to advance.


3—Bryan Mills, Taken, Ireland

Sure, they say he's American, but Liam Neeson was too busy killing the shit out of everything in sight to meet up with the dialect coach, which is why he gets to fly the green, white, and orange in this Cup. I needn't rehash all the reasons laid out in this post, so refer to that in case you somehow forgot how goddamn great Taken is, and how much ass Liam Neeson kicks in it.

So, you may be asking, why is he not the guy for all of Europe? Because the top two also-rans and the champion are just that fucking cool. So prepare to get your socks knocked off.


2—Jacques Mesrine (“C'est prononcé 'MAY-REEN' vous enculés!”), Mesrine, France

Ah, Vincent Cassel. He fucks shit up in just about everything he's ever been in, playing villains and heroes with equal skill, though he takes particular relish in being bad. Which is probably why he's so spectacular as Mesrine. It took two movies and four hours that were basically just an episodic account of thunderously badass (if occasionally embroidered) deeds, to tell Mesrine's story. Not all of it is pretty—him being a shitbag woman-beater is his eventual undoing in the Cup—but the number of times and ways the motherfucker broke out of prison, it's like he's a French version of the velociraptors in Jurassic Park.

He's more badass in the first part of Mesrine, “Killer Instinct,” than in the second, “Public Enemy No. 1,” but that's largely due to the director having to—I guess—return his tripod to the shop after filming the first part, because there's too much bullshit shaky-cam shit in part two, which suffers from being both more of the same from part one but being darker, since it's when Mesrine confronts his own mortality and decides he wants to be a leftist. Which is fine, I mean heaven knows we could use an actual Left in America, but when you're some dude who robs banks with his dick out and beats his wives, you might want to chill with the insurrectionary rhetoric. Sometimes you're not a resistance fighter, sometimes you just steal shit. And as the cops reminded Mesrine at the end of the picture, by lighting his ass the fuck up in broad daylight, they were in charge.

All that negativity should serve to point up the fact that the fucking prison break near the end of part one must have been tight as fuck (Ed. Note: the fucking prison break near the end of part one was tight as fuck) because that alone vaults him this high in the rankings. Also, he's Vincent Cassel. I like Vincent Cassel.


1—James Bond, various, United Kingdom

The odds-on favorite to win worldwide, 007's shocking upset in the Europe group stage set the cinematic sporting press aflutter, with many hailing this as the most surprising defeat in the history of sport. Or, you know, it would be if this was a real thing.

Whence 007's defeat? Playing him made Sean Connery a star, for which we should all be grateful, made Pierce Brosnan a star, for which we should all be . . . well, not as grateful. And it gave us Daniel Craig, and Daniel Craig fucking rocks. It's not his fault Cowboys & Aliens sucked balls, and that The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo is probably going to be gloomy whack-off-in-your-hat bullshit despite his and David Fincher's best efforts. But James Bond never has that problem, right? He's always awesome, consistently shaken-not-stirred, always wins in the end, always gets the finest specimens womanhood has to offer . . . right?

Alas, even James Bond has his Achilles heel. In this case, it's the Roger Moore/Timothy Dalton years, which collectively consist of almost half the franchise's duration. During those years, Bond was a fucking dick (the Moore years) and a pussy (the Dalton years), the Bond girls were bland, and Bond was a fucking asshole to them. Let's break it down:

Connery—old-country chauvinist, but only hit women when they tried to kill him.
Lazenby—goofball, kind of the Ringo of the Bond franchise, but props for landing Diana Rigg.
Brosnan—charming cocksman, more of an ex-boyfriend than anything else.
Craig—tortured romantic, comparatively progressive though still quite the horndog.
Dalton—eunuch
Moore—psychopathic misogynist

It'd be one thing if it were possible to go strictly by the character and toss the actors out of the equation, but the character of Bond changed inexorably with every actor who played him. The Connery Bond owns all in his path, and if the franchise had ended with Connery we wouldn't even need a Cup. The Craig Bond isn't as sure a bet, since he's only done two, and the Quantum of Soporifics sucked, but Casino Royale is, no exaggeration, one of the best action pictures ever made and stands side by side with the best of the Connery years. Brosnan coasted on the fact that at least he wasn't Roger Moore. But goddamn. The Roger Moore years were really, really bad. Bad enough to be the stumbling block for James Bond's quest for the Cup. (By the way, I know I kid around a lot on this blog, but I'm dead serious about this: if you cross swords with me on the Roger Moore question, we are at war). This is basically the equivalent of a soccer player losing the game by scoring five own-goals, on purpose, to lose the game 5-4. For the non-soccer fans out there, doing that will get you killed in every country on earth other than the United States. Fucking Roger Moore . . .

(Ed. Note: Apparently he's a sweetheart IRL, so there's that. But holy Christ his Bond movies suck.)


And, finally, our surprising winner, the Cinderella of the Cup so far . . .


Moses, Attack The Block, United Kingdom

Since on the surface this looks like a case of something I saw recently seeming better because I just saw it, let's look at the objective merits of both this character and the movie itself. First, there aren't a lot of good SF movies in Europe, though “good” is a hard quality to pin down when dealing with some of the fucking insanely bad but extremely fun SF pictures made in Italy (side note, if Italian Spiderman was real, he'd have been #1 on this list no question.) Second, even in the handful of good SF movies in Europe (can anyone think of another one besides Tarkovsky's Solaris and Stalker, or maaaaaybe von Trier's The Element of Crime . . .?) there aren't a whole lot of own-or-get-owned showdowns with vicious carnivorous aliens. Third, even if Moses didn't own the bejesus out of an entire battalion of vicious carnivorous aliens single-handed, there's the added bonus of the fact that a black guy representing Europe will make racists' heads explode.

The thing that makes Moses so great is that he starts out at a place where he could very easily slip into a life defined by anger at his circumstances, taking his revenge on society at large until he got so deep in the game that there would be no way out except death. But Attack The Block catches him right at the brink, where his intelligence and ferocious tenacity can be channeled into the cause of saving Earth. Because, seriously? Those wolf-gorilla motherfucker aliens could have posed a threat to the entire planet. It's Moses, Pest, Sam, Ron, the hipster stoner dude, the girls, and the rest of them whose resolute defiance stops the thread from spreading, and Moses who stands out from the pack by being the one who lures the wolf-gorilla motherfuckers to their ultimate doom.

Look, what I'm trying to say is that the second Attack The Block hits DVD and groups of friends can smoke weed to it, it is going to take on once-in-a-generation classic status. Remember how The Big Lebowski tanked at the box office and became a cult hit on home video? Or Fight Club? Chances are, you barely do, because those pictures are regarded as two of the finest of their decade, and endure as classics to this day. I'm saying this right now and posting it online where everyone can see it, so if I'm wrong you all can laugh at me, but I'm not wrong. Attack The Block is going to be regarded as one of the classic movies of this generation the second people can smoke weed to it. I haven't smoked weed in well over a year and probably won't again for well over another, if ever, but I remember it (reasonably) accurately. And I remember this: people like SF when they're high, they like horror when they're high, and they like comedy when they're high, and Attack The Block is an unstoppable and seamless blend of all three. One of the biggest reasons why is because of its hero. And that's why Moses reps Europe.

Commentator: “Moses, how do you feel about representing Europe in the Cup?”
Moses (not making eye contact, smiling shyly): “Allow it.”

Trust.

BADASS WORLD CUP GROUP STAGE: AUSTRALIA

If the Badass World Cup was the real World Cup, Australia would be the Netherlands. For the non-soccer fans out there, this means: they might not win, but they're always fucking dope. I mean like world-shatteringly awesome. Massively goddamn fucking talented. They will fuck your shit up.

Johann Cruyff is the crystallization of the parallel between Dutch soccer and Australian action cinema. He played for FC Barcelona in the 70s and scored, among many, this one goal that scientists studied and went, “well, shit, Johann, you got us stumped.” He was hauling ass as fast as he could go, coughing up both lungs cuz he smoked, and right as the ball was going out of bounds about a yard to the right of the goal, Cruyff stuck out the back of his foot and doinked the ball, which curved just past the goalie, who must have been like, “motherfucker, are you serious?” Spanish people, who love their futból, believe that, went apeshit and couldn't tell whether they wanted to compare him to Jesus Christ or put him on trial for witchcraft. That goal was so ridiculously awesome you all probably think I'm exaggerating, but you can look it up, or ask old Spanish people to tell you about it (it'd take a couple bottles of wine, but shit, I'd drink a couple bottles of wine with an old Spanish person even if they didn't have cool Johann Cruyff stories.) No one had ever seen anything like Johann Cruyff before he came along.

Australian badasses are like that. Like, if I described Russell Crowe in Romper Stomper to you, you'd be like, “For real? A skinhead with nuance?” Sure, it sounds like a contradiction in terms, but no, Romper Stomper is the picture American History X would have been if it had been better and less corny. Like look at this clip:



That shit is fucking terrifying. But note, Russell's the scariest motherfucker in the clip. That smile, what the . . . . GAHHHHHHHHH!!!! Romper Stomper will fuck you up (it's an object lesson in the difference between depiction and endorsement; Russell does die at the end, but the violence in that movie fucked me up and nothing fucks me up).

So yeah, Hando in Romper Stomper is also-ran number 5. He loses a lot of points for being a skinhead because it's an inexcusable worldview and a product of cowardice, but he's still Russell Crowe, and Russell Crowe will fuck your entire shit up. Hando actually only makes this list because he's Russell Crowe, who is as ferociously talented as any actor ever to live. No bullshit, on raw talent I rank Russell top 5 all time and for intensity, shit, he might wear the crown. This is why I'm having none of this silly ambivalence about Russell Crowe. There's a reason why in that making-of doc (if it wasn't too goddamn long, I'd embed it here) that Kanye West and Jay-Z put out about their upcoming Watch The Throne album, when they're recording, and Kanye raps something about Russell Crowe, the camera pans over, and Russell himself is fucking sitting right there. Ponder that for a second. Kanye West is not, to put it mildly, a man of low self-esteem. Neither is Jay; for fuck's sake, the reason why he calls himself “Hova” is because he's fucking comparing himself to fucking God. And yet, these two consider Russell an equal. And goddamn well they should. He was Bud White. He was Maximus. He was Captain Jack Aubrey. And once upon a time he played a smart skinhead and it fucking worked. That's talent.

Okay, on to the rest of the list:

4—Mick Dundee, Crocodile Dundee

I know what you're thinking. You hear Crocodile Dundee and remember fish-out-of-water schtick in New York and silliness. But credit's gotta be given where credit is due. Sure he's a goddamn cartoon character, but Paul Hogan deliberately based him on Tarzan, and I'll remind all you kids with no sense of history, that before decades of wackification, Tarzan fucking owned. And so does Crocodile Dundee. Mick's invincible, is one with nature, can kick anyone's ass who steps to him, and he gains as many points as Russell lost for being a skinhead for coming to New York and going, “these guys ain't so tough.” This is obviously not true (Ed. Note: the author wrote this piece while listening to Nas' Illmatic, there isn't one motherfucking thing you can say that will swerve his confidence in New York). But it's an indication of how invincible he is that he can come to New York, get mugged, and go “That's not a knife . . . [pulls what's practically a goddamn machete out] That's a knife.” And he doesn't cut the mugger, just his stupid 80s jacket, thus thoroughly owning the guy non-violently and doing him an enormous fashion favor. So don't sleep on Crocodile Dundee. Obviously, the most badass movie character in the history of Australia is not going to be the lead in a comedy, but still. Mick warrants mention.


3—Rollie Tyler, F/X

Another dark horse qualifier in the group stage. Obviously Bryan Brown was going to show up and say g'day, but the smart money would have been on Breaker Morant, in which Bryan Brown ruled. But we need to salute F/X, which even though it's an American movie, is all about the Australian guy swaggering around and fucking shit up, which is the Australian's default state anyway.

What makes Rollie Tyler so fucking awesome is: he's a special-effects guy. Now, anyone with a functioning cortex who works in the arts knows that the people who make shit, the techies, are the coolest people in the business. They have all the best stories, every last one of them can drink like goddamn champions . . . and they know how to make things explode. That's before we even add in the part about Rollie Tyler being Australian. I mean, shit, the Americans don't stand a chance.

Bonus points as well for Rollie perpetrating all his ownage in New York, again. He gets the nod over Crocodile Dundee because he owns the bad guys with his mind. And because I fucking love special effects people.


2—Zipper Doyle, Kiss or Kill

(note: I couldn't find a photo of Barry Langrishe in character as Zipper Doyle, so there's his headshot; picture that guy but fucking terrifying)

Kiss or Kill is a great little movie, and a demonstration of the formula “good thing 1 + good thing 2 = better thing,” in this case “Australia + film noir = FUCK YEAH.” It's a classic lovers-on-the-run story, the cops are great (there's a scene where they start out riffing on the “I don't eat bacon” scene from Pulp Fiction that turns into this awesome existential inquiry into the unknowable Other—can we really ever know anyone other than ourselves?—only to conclude with the one cop being like “Nah, I'm just fuckin with ya, mate.” Awesome, that's what that scene is) and the villain is both scary and bad.

That's Zipper Doyle. He's a pedophile ex-football player who goes apeshit when this tape of him fucking a kid gets out in the open and so Zipper starts killing the fuck out of everything in sight. It's only through Frances O'Connor's film noir heroine toughness (incidentally, she's definitely a contender for the Women's Badass World Cup, she's fucking great) that Zipper Doyle eventually gets owned, and that's the only reason why he's the second runner-up, but he's definitely the scariest villain in any Australian movie I've ever seen.


1—J, Animal Kingdom

If you're like me, you like minimalist acting, characters who don't ever let on what's really going on upstairs, and lay in the cut patiently for the optimum moment to take revenge. Which is to say, if you're like me, you thought Animal Kingdom was tits, and when the closing credits rolled murmured “Holy fuck that kid was awesome.”

J is the 17 year old protagonist of Animal Kingdom, who goes to live with his grandmother and his criminal uncles. Nothing happens as you expect it to. And—spoiler alert—at the end J kills the guy who killed his girlfriend in brutally calculating “fuck you” fashion and assumes the role of the man of the family. The whole movie, you know he's putting in a good performance, but holy goddamn fuck that ending vaults him to this unbelievable level of badassery. If it wasn't for the big guy, J would be repping Australia in the Badass World Cup.

And, as inevitable as it is, Australia's representative in the international stage is . . .


Max Rockatansky, Mad Max, The Road Warrior, Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome

Look, this isn't about being some hipster and pulling some character you've never heard of out of my ass and crowning him so I can be like “derpy derpity doo, look at me, I'm so fucking smart, nya nya.” This is about ownage, people. And if I need to tell you Mad Max owns, you're reading the wrong fuckin blog.

People do horrible things to Max. They kill his family. They drop nuclear bombs and force him to wander the Outback, unshaven, eating dog food. They make him go up against malignant leather queens. They (in this case Tina Turner as Auntie Entity) take out their emotional baggage after their divorce from their abusive husband on him. But all through all that fuckin shit, Max stays resolutely crazy, fucks up the bad guys, and drives really, really, really fast.

Also, remember, before we found out the extent of Mel Gibson's duckfucking insanity, he was a fearsome badass. Martin Riggs, anyone? And Riggs was the watered-down-for-American-audiences version of Mel's ownage capacity. Max was the raw, uncut, 200 proof version, back when Mel fucked his ducks in private and drove faster and more dangerously than any sapient being in this universe. And for that, he reps Australia, a land of highly underrated badassery. The Dutch football team of putting foot to ass.

BADASS WORLD CUP GROUP STAGE: SOUTH AMERICA & THE CARIBBEAN

The most important competition in the history of competition continues with our other problem continent: South America. Now, like with Africa, it should be made abundantly clear before we go any further that the problem with South American cinema is not with South American cinema. They make some beautiful films down there, but therein lies the conundrum for our purposes here at the Badass World Cup. They make “films” in South America. With very few exceptions, the aggregate ownage in any given “film” is infinitesimal.

Due to this unfortunate mathematical obstacle, the continent that gave us Black Orpheus, those great Luis Puenzo and Hector Babenco films in the 80s, The Motorcycle Diaries, and The House of Sand leaves us precious little in the way of epic swagger, big explosions, and feats of grandeur in absurdly fast cars. It does, of course, give us some beautiful cinema in exotic (to norteamericano eyes at least) locales, but this inconvenient lack of conventional (non-metaphorical/allegorical) ownage means that we have to merge South America with Central America and the Caribbean.

I know, I know, this could be construed as me taking a giant shit on a continent with hundreds of years of fascinating history and rich culture. But do not so construe, my friends. I absolve them of their lack of contributions to le cinema d' ownage for one simple reason: they have so many goddamn revolutions, coups d'etat, insurgencies, uprisings, heavily armed uncontrollable narcotrafficantes, and Estados Unidos hippies on vacation that one imagines the average South American going to the movies and saying “Yeah, I could go for some escapism . . . how's about a lyrical allegory where the protagonist dies of old age instead of lead poisoning?” Even if this is totally off-base, I'm still standing by it, and assert that the relative paucity of traditionally badass movie characters should not be held against the South Americans.

Oddly, the Caribbean, thought of as a place where people sit in the sun and smoke weed (or ponder Marxist dialectic if you're in Cuba), picks up the slack nicely with regards to grisly violence. Of course, thinking about Cuba brings up the obvious . . .


Tony Montana, Scarface, Cuba

He's Tony Focking Montana, mang. And he is widely regarded as the most badass movie character of all time. Even when threatened with chainsaws, he merely snarls “fuck you.” Even if for nothing else than when he wants to do some coke he cracks open a fucking kilo on his desk and just dunks his fucking head into it and inhales, he'd be a contender to take the whole Cup. But no man who pronounces “Florida” “Flarrida” reps Cuba, however perfect New York-ese that might be. Tony's not in this bracket. (Ed. Note: stay tuned.)

“But, listen goddammit,” you might reply, “you simply cannot have a Badass World Cup without Scarface being included! Think of the rappers, you unfeeling fool, think of the rappers!” I would never be so cruel. Scarface must be mentioned.

“Ah, so you've come to your senses,” I hear you say. “And you're going with the less obvious choice, and the better one . . .”


Sosa, Scarface, Bolivia

“I told you a long time ago, you fucking little monkey, NEVER TO FUCK ME!” Pure verbal ownage, and from an extremely sophisticated, cultured, rich, and brutally autocratic South American man. But . . . Sosa loses out as well. He was played by an American, and as we'll recall from the Africa group stage, you cannot get out of the group stage to the knockout rounds if you were played by an American in an American movie. Which is a shame, because Sosa's fucking awesome. But, the Caribbean gives us two (three?) rock solid contenders who actually are eligible to advance.


4—Ivanhoe Martin, The Harder They Come, Jamaica

The Harder They Come is more famous for its soundtrack, but the movie is fun. It's extremely low budget, the pace is a little rickety, and it seems a bit longer than it actually is, but Jimmy Cliff rules fucking balls as Ivan, a thoroughly antisocial motherfucker who'll just straight up kill you. And, to boot, he sings like Jimmy Cliff, making him a through-the-looking-glass version of the Troubadors of antiquity, who sang of their deeds, loved women, and fought for honor. Ivan sings of his own deeds very indirectly and proleptically, for no other reason than stardom. He likes the girl, but he's awkward around her. And he fights because people fuck with him. But if you fuck with him, you stop existing. Ivan does get owned by the cops at the end, but his legend lives on, and unlike Othello, whose demise was his demise, the fact that it takes practically every fucking cop in Jamaica to kill Ivan only contributes to his legend. And holy shit that soundtrack.


3a/3b—Biggs/Wayne, Shottas, also Jamaica

Now, I have to offer the disclaimer that I never saw this whole movie, only catching a few extended clips from it on one of my fellow jurors' laptop on my much-lamented jury duty stint earlier this year (one of the exasperating aspects of which was that we had so many bullshit delays that we had the time to watch almost this whole movie in the jury room waiting for people to get their shit together; this also led to them docking us a couple days' pay. Goddamnit jury duty sucked . .)

Anyway, the movie itself is an interesting, low-budget story of a life of crime, much like The Harder They Come. The intervening thirty years saw massive changes in cinema, naturally, and Shottas is as much a product of its time as The Harder They Come was of its own. It's faster paced, more violent, and best friends Biggs and Wayne lack the aura of the legend that Ivan possessed. But they kill the living shit out of everything in sight. Wayne, in particular, is quite a magnetic figure, and the fact that he gets killed (and the way in which it happens) adds to his stature as a badass; he isn't so much owned as he is martyred. And Biggs totally gets away with it and wins, which is fairly badass considering the amount of brutal violence he survives. Anyway, Shottas isn't the greatest movie in the world, but it's a fun bit of escapism, and the duo of Biggs and Wayne deserving dark horse entrants in the Cup. They may fall in the early stages, but they go down hard and memorably.


The relative paucity of conventional ownage means that what we do have is clustered a bit. So, we had two Jamaican movies, and now the last two also-rans are from the same movie:


2—Benny, City of God, Brazil

Benny's one of my favorite characters ever in cinema. He's this laid-back dude who's kind to people, and yet he's a very powerful and influential gangster. “Benny was the coolest hood in the City of God.” He's got the goofy poofy hair, the shades, he's just the nicest fucking guy in the world. This is one of the (extremely) rare instances where being a nice guy is itself badass, especially given that he manages to be that thing in the middle of Cidade de Deus. The only reason Benny's not number one is because he gets killed. It sucks when Benny gets killed. I cried.


1—Knockout Ned, also City of God, also Brazil

Your classic agent of vengeance. Gets points for the fact having a badass nickname both in his own language (it translates inexactly, but in broad strokes it venerates his cocksmanship in a culture where anyone venerating someone else's cocksmanship is a sign the one being venerated gets fucking laid) and in the English subtitles. As a primary Anglophone, I think of him as Knockout Ned, because I think that's the coolest motherfucking nickname ever.

You have to have seen City of God to understand, going to war with Lil 'Ze and surviving longer than about a second and a half is fucking awe-inspiring. Lil 'Ze makes Sonny Corleone look like Gandhi. Lil 'Ze is like Marlo Stanfield but emotional. (Ed. Note: when you have to drag both The Godfather and The Wire into a discussion to explain how scary a motherfucker is, the motherfucker under discussion is, ipso facto, a bad motherfucker.)

Ultimately, Knockout Ned fails to reach the knockout stage not just because there are only so many puns one man can make, but because when one's own badassness is primarily defined in opposition to one's antagonist, it raises the question: would one still be a badass of equivalent stature given a different antagonist? It's a beard-scratcher. Also, it took rather extreme circumstances for Knockout Ned to go from being a mild-mannered bus driver who got laid a lot to ruthless gangster. Representing one's people in the Badass World Cup requires a bit more proactive behavior.


And so, we reach the one character who gets to represent South America in the Badass World Cup (and who hopefully won't result in a shitload of hate mail like “No has visto suficientes películas de América del Sur para escribir un artículo como éste, maldito idiota!”) Befitting a continent whose cinema tends toward subtlety and “Wow, now that I think about it for a second, that seriously fucking owned,” South America's surprise representative in the knockout stages of the Badass World Cup:



Ricardo Morales, The Secret in Their Eyes, Argentina

Note, not the main character in The Secret in Their Eyes, Benjamin Esposito, played by Ricardo Darin. Ricardo Darin fucking rocks in that, and he's the main dude (and he was awesome in Nueve Reinas, of which Gregory Jacobs' excellent Criminal is a remake). But the thing that makes The Secret In Their Eyes such a good movie is that Ricardo Darin's Benjamin Esposito isn't your typical swaggering he-man type in it. He's flawed, he makes mistakes, he gets emotional, all that jazz. As an ex-cop turned writer trying to make sense of his most vexing case—an unsolved murder of a woman—he runs through several versions of the story, and while fairly certain of the culprit after a certain point, he can never prove it. And, to complicate things, the killer has political connections that make it impossible to nail his ass through official channels. And, to further complicate things, the killer just fucking disappears.

Enter Ricardo Morales, the dead woman's husband. Played by Pablo Rago, Morales seems like he's this poor nebbishy dude who's just devastated by the loss of the love of his life. For most of the movie, Esposito pities Morales, and totally gets suckered in by the whole nebbishy widower thing. Until it looks like all the clues point to Morales having found the killer, and killed him (and he had, earlier, told Morales “My wife's killer will never go free.”) Kind of badass, sure, but number one? Seems a little flimsy, no?

BUT WAIT! It turns out Morales found the killer and didn't kill him, but kept him imprisoned in his house for years. Take a second and think about that. Here's the guy who killed your one true love. You don't kill him, you keep him locked up in your remote country house where no one's ever gonna fucking come by and find you (no one except Esposito, and he isn't gonna do shit, he's not even going to put it in his book.) Think of the restraint that takes. The killer has to be thinking, every day, I could get killed today. THAT'S revenge. THAT'S fucking torture, fuck waterboarding and all that played-out Jack Bauer shit. If the true measure of ownage is a feat that makes you go, “Wow!” then Morales qualifies, no doubt.

And that's why he represents South America. Like the best South American movies, Morales' candidacy for the Cup is something you have to stop and think about for a second, but when you do, you see all kinds of levels to that shit. Also, for a true Badass World Cup, you need at least one guy no one else sees coming, because surprise badass is an essential type of badass. Ricardo Morales, take a bow. You are no one to fuck with, sir.

BADASS WORLD CUP GROUP STAGE: AFRICA

The Badass World Cup draws near! International competition, as we saw in the recently concluded women's soccer World Cup, rules. And speaking of rules, the Badass World Cup has very few. Every country on Earth is eligible. The catch is, that nation needs to have produced a movie character of sufficient badassery. Real people are not eligible, that's a separate competition, and the problem with using real people is you're like, who would kick whose ass in a fight between Bruce Lee and Chuck Norris? Well, that answer is simple now, because Bruce Lee's dead (the shit'd still go a couple rounds; don't fuck with Bruce Lee, now). So then you have to get into “if 1973 Bruce, the Bruce who fought Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in Game of Death fought the prime, matured, grizzled, admittedly fearsome Chuckster of the early to mid 80s,” and at that point, you might as well just say, Bruce in Game of Death vs. Chuckster in Eye For An Eye (my personal favorite of the Norris oeuvre). Hence, the Badass World Cup is between fictional movie characters. (And I know it's going to look sexist that it's all dudes, but the standards of female badassery are just different enough that we need to have a separate Cup, which we will).

First up, Africa. The way it should be, goddammit. Actually, the greatest slept-on feat of historical badassery took place in Africa a really long fucking time ago. I forget where I was reading this, otherwise I'd link to it, but apparently some geneticists figured out that after having attained a pretty good level of prosperity like a zillion years ago (like seriously, hundreds of thousands of years ago), something really big happened that knocked humanity down to only a couple thousand TOTAL human beings. And they survived. And that bunch of human beings were the ones who spread out and settled the rest of the world over the next couple dozen millennia, I guess because they were like “fuck this, if we spread out, there'll still be some of us even if the Motherland takes another hit, let's explore.” The cats who had that can-do spirit, thanks to whom we all exist today? Africans. Give it up.

But as anyone who's ever been around “these goddamn kids today” knows, each younger generation is an order of magnitude bigger shitheads than the previous. It is thus that even though we owe everything we are to Africa and the early Africans' resolute refusal to bow to extinction, the whole rest of the world are just fucking horrible douchebags to Africa and have been for like ever. So even though even discussing it in such a light tone belittles the horrors that have been visited on Africa by the rest of the world, I'm here to set the record straight by putting them first in this most important of all international competitions. I know, Africa as one will roll their eyes and go “thanks, fuckface,” but goddammit I'm trying.

So, first, a list of the top four also-rans (that may be incomplete, and bizarrely there are no Djimon Hounsou performances on here, but as you'll see in a minute, it doesn't matter because the winner owns any omitted ones you can throw at me):


4—Othello, Morocco or somewhere

Has the advantage of having been written by Shakespeare. Gains massive amounts of points for the “put out the light, and then put out the light” business (Billy Shakes had a way with words) and his military career truly was spectacular. His one fatal flaw as a badass, though, especially in a competition, is that he lost. Iago fucks his ass up good. Sure, Iago is Iago, greatest villain of all time blah blah blah, but hey, Harry Potter killed Voldemort maybe before he even got laid (Ginny Weasley was a redhead, but still, ya never know). Othello was a stone badass, one of North Africa's best, but he doesn't advance to the intercontinental stage after getting owned by Iago. World-conquering badasses own, they don't get owned.


3—Desh, The Bourne Ultimatum, somewhere in North Africa

A definite sleeper, and he does lose fairly early in the competition (for the same reason as Othello, ultimately; he gets owned by Jason Bourne, though he puts up a hell of a fucking fight). And really, his badassness is externally defined: it's all in Julia Stiles' line reading when she looks up in the computer to see who the baddies are sending after Bourne and she goes “It's Desh.” Like, she's in awe, and even though she's standing right next to Jason Fucking Bourne, she has a moment of doubt, and this was after two and a half movies of him kicking everybody's ass up and down the known world. So, he doesn't advance, but he definitely warrants mentioning.


2—The Scorpion King, Egypt

An early upset. He was played by The Rock, and was thus enormously muscular. The sword helps, as does the horse—swords and horses are awesome—and you'd think he'd be in position to fuck everybody up and maybe even win, except for another fatal flaw: neither the Mummy sequel he initially appeared in nor his spinoff vehicle were terribly good. They're fun and everything, but still. Also, loses points for something I didn't mention in the first two entries, but I bring up now as foreshadowing for the winner of this group: he was in an American movie. You do not get to represent your entire continent if you were a character in an American movie. Unless you're repping America.


1—Christopher Johnson, District 9, South Africa

Not Wikus, because Wikus was cool and everything, but he had to evolve beyond putzhood, and if you're going to take the continent-wide Cup that just ain't gonna cut it. No, Christopher, the main Prawn character, represents District 9 due to being a member of an extremely oppressed ethnic group, risking life and limb to save his kid's life, and in spite of his ferocious anger toward his oppressors, was still a good enough guy to accept Wikus as an ally. His badassness is what makes Wikus mildly badass by the end of the picture, and if you're enough of a badass that you make your teammates better (pardon the sports metaphor) then that makes you more of a badass. Unfortunately, the reason why Christopher has to finish 2nd is because . . . well . . . he's not from round here. Even though District 9 is a big ol metaphor for race relations in South Africa with layers and layers of irony, Christopher Johnson was nonetheless not born in Africa (even though his kid was, I think; it's been a while). Thus, even though he was a wonderful character—so much so that by the end of the movie he'd ceased to be weird-looking—he comes just short.


Before we get to #1, a qualifier: there are a lot of wonderful movies made in Africa. The tenor of this list should not be read as ignorance or dismissal of Africa's extremely underrated cinema. When I was up on the Cape visiting Mom back in May we saw this really good, gorgeously shot picture from Burkina Faso called Rêves de poussière that told a very simple story through symbolism, allegory, and the composition of the shots. A movie about gold miners out in the middle of the desert where everything's a hot, dusty, searing, abrasive gold color, hey, that's unity of form and content. But, and this is not that movie's fault, nor is it in the rich cinemas of Burkina Faso, Nigeria, Senegal, Cameroon, South Africa, and so on, but these movies tend to be a bit low on ownage. The destruction of dreams, tragic misfortune, fatalism? Sure, they got lots. Africa's got art cinema on lock. But where are the action heroes, you ask?

Fortunately, there is one. And ho boy will he kick your ass.


Makmende, Kenya

Makmende will fuck your entire shit the fuck up. Deriving from a really funny story—when Sudden Impact came out in Kenya, all the kids thought Clint was awesome but kinda funny, which is a solid take on Sudden Impact by the way, and they ran around making finger guns and going “make my day” except in a Kenyan accent it sounded like “makmende” and so they started goofing on the word “makmende” and whenever someone got to flexing his nuts excessively everybody'd smirk and and go “Hey, check out Makmende over here”—Makmende achieved international recognition through this awesome video by the group Just a Band:



It's important to note that although clearly everyone involved knows that it's funny, it doesn't make Makmende any less badass, and in fact that's actually an essential part of what makes him such a force to be reckoned with. Makmende is the perfect champion for this competition, because if you honestly think I take the idea of a Badass World Cup seriously I have a nice bridge to sell you . . . and yet I'm not entirely not serious either. Thus is the genius of Makmende. The whole idea is funny, but at the end of the day, his foot is right in your ass, and he gets the girl and saves the day. And also that song is awesome.

Bonus Makmende here (embedding disabled by request), as we see him leading the Allies to victory in WWII. When you can bend time and space to kick ass, that's when you know you're a worthy continental champion. Next up is . . . shit, South America? Australia? Who knows. It's a big world out there, with many badasses to be choose from.