10 Deadliest Movie Assassins And Hitmen
Set your sights on Hollywood's most dangerous antiheroes.
The cities and towns are awash with silent killers, biding their time. Or at least that's what the movies would have us believe. It's a measure of how much we enjoy crossing the grey line of amorality that the stone-cool killer has become one of the most potent antiheroes in cinematic history. But what separates assassins and hitmen? Presumably it's because the latter kills for gangland cash, while the former kills for personal principles. If the killer-for-hire didn't exist as a career option, it's hard to know what commercial cinema would do with all its existential outsiders. All those icily calm men with few family connections and a holdall full of 'sports equipment'. In reality, claim old veterans of the underworld, it's very rare for anyone to actually be paid for a 'hit' - taking out a friend's rival or enemy is regarded more along the lines of a favour, though it's seen as something that should open reciprocal doors to various moneymaking rackets. Nor is it a full-time occupation. In the 1970s, bestselling paperback Joey The Hitman: Autobiography Of A Mafia Killer explained that a hit was merely an option taken by a ruthless criminal if it arose, diverting him from his day-to-day activities of, say, running numbers rackets or pirating eight-track cartridge albums. But by then the popular fictional archetype was established, from the shadowy killers of 1940s film noir to a factually-based character like Luca Brasi in the Godfather cycle. Paradoxically perhaps, more commercial killings seem to have been made in the arena of political assassination - probably because the stakes are higher and there's often an organisational hierarchy prepared to pay for it. And sometimes the demarcation lines of political commitment and opportunism blur - he may have come from a well-to-do family, but Carlos The Jackal (as played by Edgar Ramirez in the 2010 international miniseries) is kept in the manner to which he's accustomed by the Marxist groups he kills for. The killer-for-hire is such an all-purpose figure that there are almost too many to choose from. But let's fire some random shots across the boundaries of killing for cash and killing for conviction. We'll also lock icy stares with those individuals most deserving of the term 'assassin', as it was derived from the Middle Eastern cult who were compelled to kill not for profit but by their beliefsĀ