ChiefsPlanet - Movies and TV Top Ten Quentin Tarantino Movie Characters

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Butch Coolidge
(Pulp Fiction)

The original, samurai sword-wielding figure. The pugilist with a conscious saves an adversary from a midway anal rape in some very odd circumstances. The Golden Watch is totally mad. Butch Coolidge is classic film noir material: the dumb lug with hidden depths. Expertly played by Bruce Willis, Butch is a man on borrowed time, but won’t go down so easily in life as he does in the ring. Sure he’s a bit crooked and low-down, but his quiet authority and bravery saves the skin of a man who wants him dead, and helps pays off a debt. Plus he gets to mouth the immortal line, “Zed’s dead, baby. Zed’s dead,” then rides off into film history.

Vincenzo Coccotti
(True Romance)

It could be argued Vincenzo Coccotti is the best underused villain in the whole of the Tarantino canon. Appearing in the middle of Tony Scott’s True Romance and played by Christopher Walken, Coccotti’s quiet graceful menace is matched with probably the single best scene of dialogue ever to spew forth from Tarantino’s mind.

Coccotti informs Hopper’s beaten and soon-to-be dead character that he can smell bullshit a mile off. In fact, it’s in the genes. The fatalism is palpable as the scene goes from funny to tragic. He listens to the insults aimed at him with humour. Every pause, every beat, every look, is timed to perfection. After all, Coccotti’s father was the champion of Sicilian liars. He’s a cold-blooded son of a bitch, too.

Seth Gecko
(From Dusk ‘Till Dawn)

One of Tarantino’s charming but lethal nutjobs (and played by George Clooney). Gecko is a small time crook with a hint of a conscious. He’s got a brother, too, who’s a bit of a liability. Gekko wins major “cool points” for having a tattoo that has since been much copied in real life. Robert Rodrigruez’s Tex-Mex gangster-vampire hybrid is enjoyable from start to finish, but Clooney owns the entire film and Gecko gets to spit delicious dialogue throughout: “You touch my brother with that stake, biker, and vampires won’t have to suck your blood. They’ll be able to lick it up off the floor.” Maybe the brothers Gecko will surface in the future? One can only hope.

Mr. Blonde/Vic Vega
(Reservoir Dogs)

“Are you gonna bark all day, little doggy, or are you gonna bite?” One of the first truly iconic pieces of dialogue spoken in Tarantinos flicks. Mr. Blonde is a psychopath, but he’s not charming. He’s the big villain of Dogs. A man interested in self-preservation at any cost. In a scene that got the film banned for some years in the UK, Mr. Blonde tortures a police officer by kicking the shit out of him, pouring petrol all over him and cutting off an ear with a straight razor. That this scene caused mass panic amongst British film censors – despite the camera moving away from the horror – shows what impact the director’s debut film had. And just as he’s about to set fire to the poor piggy, he gets his comeuppance. Alongside Stuntman Mike, Mr. Blonde is definitely the nastiest bastard yet.

Stuntman Mike
(Deathproof)

And speaking of the devil. Tarantino’s grindhouse cinema homage didn’t do very well at the box office. He described it as a slasher movie at one hundred miles an hour, or something like that. Truth be told, it doesn’t go anywhere for a very long time. Yet despite the flat tyres, there’s the utter misogynist bastard, Stuntman Mike and his “deathproof” car to make up for it. Again, the genius lies in the casting of Kurt Russell as the psycho killer. A man so cocksure and cool on the surface, he’s a real lady killer! In the end he gets his arse kicked big time. Deathrproof might be a misjudged adventure on the whole, but Stuntman Mike and his car make sure it was a memorable ride.

The Bride
(Kill Bill)

The Bride Wore Yellow in Quentin Tarantino’s homage to spaghetti westerns and eastern movies, that actually has its basis in Francois Truffaut’s Jeanne Moreau starring, The Bride Wore Black. The rip-roaring rampage of revenge was split into two separate films – the first one excellent and the second one feeling like too many DVD deleted scenes were present. The ending was a let down, too. The first part, the “action” part, was often incredible. Uma Thurman’s battered bride comes back from the dead to take revenge on the fiends who tried, and failed, to kill her. The fight scene at the House of Blue Leaves took months to film. It moves like a piece of music. It’s funky, silly, gory, operatic, beautiful and euphoric. Uma Thurman’s Bride became a feminist icon for the noughties proving Tarantino’s films do not feature weak women. They kick ass!

Hans Landa
(Inglourious Basterds)

Rumour has it Tarantino wouldn’t make Inglourious Basterds unless he found his “perfect” Hans Landa, Nazi legend, skilled linguist and charmer. One of the great things about Tarantino’s movies is the perfect casting choices he continues to make. His almost-supernatural ability to envision a character and actor is incredible. The world had never heard of Christoph Waltz before this. Now the guy’s winning awards left, right and centre. The Jew hunter extraordinaire should be the most repulsive and reviled character ever, but is so affable and easy-going he’s a character you want to spend as much screen time with as possible.

Jules Winnfield
(Pulp Fiction)

Jules Winnfield is a bad mother****er. By the end of Pulp Fiction, he’s also a repentant mother****er. A life of blood and violence is not what he wants. A gangster’s gopher and hitman Winnfield is cool, slightly bonkers and loves to quote from Ezekiel 25:17 before killing folk. All together now: “The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the iniquities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he, who in the name of charity and good will, shepherds the weak through the valley of darkness, for he is truly his brother’s keeper and the finder of lost children. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who would attempt to poison and destroy my brothers. And you will know my name is the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon thee.” Bang, bang, classic moment.

O-Ren Ishii
(Kill Bill)

Lucy Lui will never again play as great a villainess as this. Hell, she probably will never play as great a part as this. O-Ren Ishii, “half Chinese, half Japanese-y” (according to The Rza song), a.k.a Cottonmouth a.k.a Foul-mouth, is one deadly assassin. The tyrant head of the Yakuza who enjoys loping off the heads of crime bosses who don’t agree with her, The Bride’s nemesis isn’t Bill in the first film, it’s O-Ren. The showdown between The Bride and O-Ren in the Japanese snow garden is the emotional pay-off after a crazy extended fight in the house of blue leaves. The Bride cuts off the top of her head, revealing her brain. It’s awesome.

Shosanna Dreyfus
(Inglourious Basterds)

Melanie Laurent’s Jewish runaway represents something quite new in Tarantino’s roster of female characters. She is as much the avenging angel as The Bride, but there is a historical pressure and angle to this character that heightens the tragedy. Her story in Inglourious Basterds achieves an emotion tone that is highly unusual for a Tarantino film.

His WW2 fantasia is a lot more outré than many people expected. It is not a history lesson or the men-on-a-mission flick everybody assumed it would be. Instead, it takes movie history and movie iconography and splatters it all over like a Jackson Pollock painting. Tarantino does not give Shosanna a happy ending. He allows her the revenge before (like the movie maestro he is) sacrificing her on the altar of cinema. Shosanna is courageous, sexy, tragic, but allowed an emotional dimension that is not apparent in pretty much any other Tarantino character. She is a classic movie heroine, a femme fatale, the lost girl.