In a recent (and slightly alcohol fueled) conversation with my better half. We asked the question, what happened to the original hard as nails cops of the movies? Have they become a thing made of myth since Hollywood got their claws into them and made them sensitive men of the 90’s that aren’t afraid to cry.
So here are some of IMoG’s hardest cops of movie history.
They have a badge, they have a gun, they have big balls of steel.
So here are some of IMoG’s hardest cops of movie history.
They have a badge, they have a gun, they have big balls of steel.
In a nut shell: Mickey Rourke plays NYPD cop Stanley White. A hard as nails Vietnam vet who has been drafted in to sort out the increasing violence of the gangs running amok in New York’s Chinatown, which he does in a grand fashion. Not only does he pretty much take on the entire population of Chinatown but given half the chance, he probably would have taken on the whole of China as well.
Hardest moment:
When two hitmen disturb a little marital spat Stanley is having with his wife, the gloves well and truly come off. He shoots his attacker only to find his wife dead with her throat cut on the bathroom floor.
He chases the second hitman into the street, pausing briefly to pull the biggest hand cannon ever seen on film at the time which he kept laying around in a cabinet in the hallway.
machine-gun fire shreds the doorway as he comes through it (this seems to happen a lot to him, so if he ever holds the door open for you don’t go through it) and the hitman is away in his waiting car.
Stanley gives chase on foot and manages to get a finely aimed shot off which hits the hitman in the back of the head.
The car spins out of control and hits a wall. Boom the car goes up in flames (never buy American) but Stanley isn’t finished yet. He drags the dead and burning body of the hitman from the car to the yells of his brother in law (also a cop)
“Stanley! What the hell are you doing?”
Stanley replies, “He’s evidence”
One liners:
Don’t be silly, this man doesn’t have time to crack out some witty and ironic joke after blowing someone away, he’s got more gooks to kill! Ermmm, I mean suspects.
Does he cry:
Only once after his wife’s funeral but he’s already well into his second bottle of Jameson’s. That fine single malt would melt the emotional armour of any man.
Does he get the bad guy:
Of course he does and once he’s capped him, he decides (with one arm in plaster and a nasty limp) to arrest an entire funeral procession for the gang boss he’s killed. The result of which is a full blown riot.
2# Insp. Harry Callahan Dirty Harry (1979)
In a nut shell:
Clint Eastwood is San Francisco cop Insp. Harry Callahan aka Dirty Harry. He’s a good cop that dispenses justice his own way.
When a deranged sniper starts capping people left and right in old Frisco, Harry Callahan isn’t too chuffed and becomes fixated on finding the suspect just to show him a whole new meaning to the word pain.
Hardest moment:
Harry has just shot the sniper in the leg with his infamous .44 Magnum. The punks down, bleeding and begging for his life. Even though this nut job has kidnapped a young girl who is held up somewhere running out of air, Harry still ambles over to him almost enjoying the moment.
Harry asks where the girl is.
The psycho screams, “you tried to kill me”
Harry replies “If I’d tried that, your head would be splattered all over this field. Now where’s the girl?”
Not Happy with the answers he’s getting, Harry begins torturing the psycho by standing on the bullet hole in the punks leg which is so big, he could quite easily use it as a cup holder.
One liners:
The man has as many one liners as he has bullets and if you can’t quote one from any of the five films then you need to get electricity and a TV put into your cave.
Does he cry:
The man wasn’t born with tear ducts, that simple. God cries for him instead.
Does he get the bad guy:
Dirty Harry is Death incarnate, you work it out.
Hardest moment:
When two hitmen disturb a little marital spat Stanley is having with his wife, the gloves well and truly come off. He shoots his attacker only to find his wife dead with her throat cut on the bathroom floor.
He chases the second hitman into the street, pausing briefly to pull the biggest hand cannon ever seen on film at the time which he kept laying around in a cabinet in the hallway.
machine-gun fire shreds the doorway as he comes through it (this seems to happen a lot to him, so if he ever holds the door open for you don’t go through it) and the hitman is away in his waiting car.
Stanley gives chase on foot and manages to get a finely aimed shot off which hits the hitman in the back of the head.
The car spins out of control and hits a wall. Boom the car goes up in flames (never buy American) but Stanley isn’t finished yet. He drags the dead and burning body of the hitman from the car to the yells of his brother in law (also a cop)
“Stanley! What the hell are you doing?”
Stanley replies, “He’s evidence”
One liners:
Don’t be silly, this man doesn’t have time to crack out some witty and ironic joke after blowing someone away, he’s got more gooks to kill! Ermmm, I mean suspects.
Does he cry:
Only once after his wife’s funeral but he’s already well into his second bottle of Jameson’s. That fine single malt would melt the emotional armour of any man.
Does he get the bad guy:
Of course he does and once he’s capped him, he decides (with one arm in plaster and a nasty limp) to arrest an entire funeral procession for the gang boss he’s killed. The result of which is a full blown riot.
2# Insp. Harry Callahan Dirty Harry (1979)
In a nut shell:Clint Eastwood is San Francisco cop Insp. Harry Callahan aka Dirty Harry. He’s a good cop that dispenses justice his own way.
When a deranged sniper starts capping people left and right in old Frisco, Harry Callahan isn’t too chuffed and becomes fixated on finding the suspect just to show him a whole new meaning to the word pain.
Hardest moment:
Harry has just shot the sniper in the leg with his infamous .44 Magnum. The punks down, bleeding and begging for his life. Even though this nut job has kidnapped a young girl who is held up somewhere running out of air, Harry still ambles over to him almost enjoying the moment.
Harry asks where the girl is.
The psycho screams, “you tried to kill me”
Harry replies “If I’d tried that, your head would be splattered all over this field. Now where’s the girl?”
Not Happy with the answers he’s getting, Harry begins torturing the psycho by standing on the bullet hole in the punks leg which is so big, he could quite easily use it as a cup holder.
One liners:
The man has as many one liners as he has bullets and if you can’t quote one from any of the five films then you need to get electricity and a TV put into your cave.
Does he cry:
The man wasn’t born with tear ducts, that simple. God cries for him instead.
Does he get the bad guy:
Dirty Harry is Death incarnate, you work it out.
3# Sergeant Martin Riggs Lethal Weapon (1987)
In a nut shell:
Mel Gibson is Martin Riggs, another Vietnam vet who has developed a hugely entertaining suicidal death wish after losing his wife in a car accident.
Well entertaining for us but so much for his newly assigned (coming up to retirement) partner Danny Glover.
Whilst investigating the suicide of a hooker who’s taken a swan dive out of a 30 floor window, Riggs and Murtaugh uncover a sinister drug gang run by ex-military peeps. Being nice and considerate chaps, they decide to save the tax payers some money and just kill every single last one of them.
Hardest moment:
Riggs arrives at a call where a sniper is holed up in an apartment building taking pot shots at a group of pinned down kids in a play park. Riggs calmly walks into the line of fire and shouts to the sniper something like “You got a pair or do you only do kids?”
This annoys Mr Sniper and he starts firing at Riggs. Unfortunately his a crap shot and misses. Good news is Mr Riggs isn’t. He fills the guy with holes. The first shot kills him, the other 17 are just to make damn sure no one can make a canoe out of poor old Mr Sniper.
No one liners here, he just lights a fag and wanders off. A passing police man who is blessed with the gift of stating the bleeding obvious says.
“You sure are one crazy son of a bitch but you’re good”
Not shit Sherlock.
One liners:
Riggs in the first film hasn’t really developed his arsenal of quips, he’s too busy working out creative ways to get killed in the line of duty.
But he does poke some cruel fun at his tormented partner.
Does he cry:
Like a baby. But again, he’s already well into his 8th bottle of Jack Daniels and hugging a picture of his dead wife. Pussy you think, you think wrong. Only moments before he tasting the business end of his gun. But he didn’t pull the trigger! I hear you say. Well if he had we wouldn’t have a film you silly person.
Does he get the bad guy:
And then some. He kicks the living shit out of the perp and lures him into the false hope he’s getting arrested, then shoots him anyway.
What a tease.
In a nut shell:Mel Gibson is Martin Riggs, another Vietnam vet who has developed a hugely entertaining suicidal death wish after losing his wife in a car accident.
Well entertaining for us but so much for his newly assigned (coming up to retirement) partner Danny Glover.
Whilst investigating the suicide of a hooker who’s taken a swan dive out of a 30 floor window, Riggs and Murtaugh uncover a sinister drug gang run by ex-military peeps. Being nice and considerate chaps, they decide to save the tax payers some money and just kill every single last one of them.
Hardest moment:
Riggs arrives at a call where a sniper is holed up in an apartment building taking pot shots at a group of pinned down kids in a play park. Riggs calmly walks into the line of fire and shouts to the sniper something like “You got a pair or do you only do kids?”
This annoys Mr Sniper and he starts firing at Riggs. Unfortunately his a crap shot and misses. Good news is Mr Riggs isn’t. He fills the guy with holes. The first shot kills him, the other 17 are just to make damn sure no one can make a canoe out of poor old Mr Sniper.
No one liners here, he just lights a fag and wanders off. A passing police man who is blessed with the gift of stating the bleeding obvious says.
“You sure are one crazy son of a bitch but you’re good”
Not shit Sherlock.
One liners:
Riggs in the first film hasn’t really developed his arsenal of quips, he’s too busy working out creative ways to get killed in the line of duty.
But he does poke some cruel fun at his tormented partner.
Does he cry:
Like a baby. But again, he’s already well into his 8th bottle of Jack Daniels and hugging a picture of his dead wife. Pussy you think, you think wrong. Only moments before he tasting the business end of his gun. But he didn’t pull the trigger! I hear you say. Well if he had we wouldn’t have a film you silly person.
Does he get the bad guy:
And then some. He kicks the living shit out of the perp and lures him into the false hope he’s getting arrested, then shoots him anyway.
What a tease.
In a nut shell:Bruce Willis is John McClane, a New York cop that’s toodled over to LA for the Xmas hols to see his estranged wife. Only a bunch of long haired hippy and tennis pro looking terrorists decide to take the skyscraper hostage. Mr McClane is not too happy about this and sets out to kill them all, armed with only his trusty side arm, his wife beater vest and his deep seeded psychotic emotional baggage.
Hardest moment:
Make no mistake John McClane is as hard as they come. Not because he is just a hard bastard, he’s hard because the man is off the ‘I’m a fucking looney toon’ chart. So don’t let his loveable, wise cracking charm fool you, the guys a psycho killer with a badge.
So down to the hardest moment, well he has a few things that just make him uber hard. The fact that is wife is sporting the most horrific hair cut to come out of the 80’s and he still wants to do the horizontal rumba with her is one of them.
He pulls pieces of broken glass the size of carving knives out of his feet is another.
But the one part that really highlights how unhinged this mofo is, is the part when he takes on one of the terrorists in a fist fight. The guys huge and could probably have him but that doesn’t bother his nut job of a cop, he wades in anyway and breaks his neck.
Then McClane plonks dead body on a chair, dresses him up in a santa hat and writes ‘Ho ho ho, now I have a machine gun’ on his shirt and sends the dead body down in the lift to where the rest of the bad guys are hanging out.
We as the audience find this funny. The bad guys however start to quietly brick themselves as they slowly begin to realise there is a serial killer loose in the building.
One liners:
John McClane finds everyone he kills amusing and he is just brimming with one liners.
“Welcome to the party pal” is one line he shouts after chucking a dead body out of the building onto the bonet of a police car and as I seem to recall he lets out a small giggle as the copper fills his pants.
But his most infamous line is the “Yippee Ki aye mother fucker” which probably had the lower end of the IQ American audience on their feet clapping shouting back ‘you tell that limey fucker John!’
Does he cry:
He gets a little misty when he’s talking on the radio to the fat cop outside the building and hides it behind the old ‘if I don’t make it please tell….’ Routine.
This didn’t fool me. There are a few reasons I can think of why he wanted to cry.
1# He’d just realised how bloody awful his wife’s hair was.
2# He really needed a pee.
3# He hadn’t killed or maimed someone in over 10 mins.
I go for number 3.
Does he get the bad guy:
Of course he does. He kills every last one of them and in various styles to please his homicidal impulses.
He’s an arrogant, cockey, swinging dick of an American. They always come up top trumps when faced with a gang of English and European bad guys because brawn always wins over brains!
YIPPEEEEE KIIIIIII AYYEEEEE LIMEY FUCKERS!
5# FBI Agent Frank Castle The Punisher (2004)
In a nut shell:
Thomas Jane is Frank Castle who’s just fresh into retirement from his life as a deep cover agent to his sexy wife and plucky son. Unfortunately Mr Castle blew away the son of slightly powerful crime boss and as you can guess, he’s slightly miffed.
And when the crime bosses wife tells him to kill his whole family you think just Mr Castle’s wife and son, you’d be wrong. They kill everyone from his mother and father, his father and mother in law, their offspring, the offspring’s offspring, the cat, the dog, the hamster and the goldfish.
Hardest moment:
Mr Castle is just hard through out the entire film. They shoot him four or five times and blow him up (never once thinking to shoot him in the head)
Mr Castle still walks away from it, mere flesh wounds. He then goes about sinking crate after crate of Wild Turkey whiskey night after night whilst polishing his pistol (oooo err) and hatching his somewhat fucked up and extremely vindictive plan on how he’s going to fuck this crime boss right up.
One liners:
Mr Castle prefers to monologue to his victims as a prelude to the sick and twisted way he’s come up with to dispatch them to the after life.
The closest thing he has to a one liner is when someone tells him to go with God.
Castle just replies “God? God’s going to sit this one out”
Does he cry:
Not a single tear. Even after he’s just found his wife and son who have just been mangled by a 4x4 he only gets slightly misty and I mean slightly.
The one point in the film where I thought he was going to lose it and break down I was completely wrong. He just tools off and gathers up his fathers arsenal of weapons the inept police just happened to leave lying about at the crime scene.
But he doesn’t stop there, Mr Castle has a stash of weapons of his own which he has obviously gathered up over his years as a FED but with the amount of gear he’s got, he could probably arm China.
Real men like Castle don’t cry, they just polish guns.
Does he get the bad guy:
Not only does he get the bad guy, he spends most of the film mentally torturing the swine! Castle goes to great lengths to make the crime boss think his best friend (who is a closet gay) is fucking his wife. Crime boss kills friend and tosses his wife off a bridge. At this point Jeremy Beadle jumps out and shouts “You’ve been framed butt munch”
Castle kills them all and he uses every weapon at his disposal in such creative ways you feel like giving the poor sod some cash so he can go out and get laid.
Thinking up creative ways to kill people is not a healthy pass time. He’s on par with John McClane for the psychotic bastard crown.
In a nut shell:
Thomas Jane is Frank Castle who’s just fresh into retirement from his life as a deep cover agent to his sexy wife and plucky son. Unfortunately Mr Castle blew away the son of slightly powerful crime boss and as you can guess, he’s slightly miffed.
And when the crime bosses wife tells him to kill his whole family you think just Mr Castle’s wife and son, you’d be wrong. They kill everyone from his mother and father, his father and mother in law, their offspring, the offspring’s offspring, the cat, the dog, the hamster and the goldfish.
Hardest moment:
Mr Castle is just hard through out the entire film. They shoot him four or five times and blow him up (never once thinking to shoot him in the head)
Mr Castle still walks away from it, mere flesh wounds. He then goes about sinking crate after crate of Wild Turkey whiskey night after night whilst polishing his pistol (oooo err) and hatching his somewhat fucked up and extremely vindictive plan on how he’s going to fuck this crime boss right up.
One liners:
Mr Castle prefers to monologue to his victims as a prelude to the sick and twisted way he’s come up with to dispatch them to the after life.
The closest thing he has to a one liner is when someone tells him to go with God.
Castle just replies “God? God’s going to sit this one out”
Does he cry:
Not a single tear. Even after he’s just found his wife and son who have just been mangled by a 4x4 he only gets slightly misty and I mean slightly.
The one point in the film where I thought he was going to lose it and break down I was completely wrong. He just tools off and gathers up his fathers arsenal of weapons the inept police just happened to leave lying about at the crime scene.
But he doesn’t stop there, Mr Castle has a stash of weapons of his own which he has obviously gathered up over his years as a FED but with the amount of gear he’s got, he could probably arm China.
Real men like Castle don’t cry, they just polish guns.
Does he get the bad guy:
Not only does he get the bad guy, he spends most of the film mentally torturing the swine! Castle goes to great lengths to make the crime boss think his best friend (who is a closet gay) is fucking his wife. Crime boss kills friend and tosses his wife off a bridge. At this point Jeremy Beadle jumps out and shouts “You’ve been framed butt munch”
Castle kills them all and he uses every weapon at his disposal in such creative ways you feel like giving the poor sod some cash so he can go out and get laid.
Thinking up creative ways to kill people is not a healthy pass time. He’s on par with John McClane for the psychotic bastard crown.
