8. Rose Ross (Caren Pistorius) - Slow West
Its been a big year for female action roles, and the most underrated comes in Slow West, John Macleans masterful neo-western. You dont even know that Rose Ross is going to be a heroine until the final act of the film, such is her minimal, mainly-shown-in-flashback involvement in the movie up until that point. Indeed, Caren Pistorius (no relation to Oscar but born in South Africa) Rose isnt an action role in the same way that Charlize Therons (see later) is, but the fact remains that she, holed up in a wooden shack and facing bombardment by a phalanx of bounty hunters, spends the last fifteen minutes of Slow West picking off gunslingers with the skill and poise of an assassin. The love interest of Kodi Smit-McPhees Jay, Rose differs in that while she doesnt reciprocate his feelings, she never exploits them either, staying amiable with the naïve Jay but never leading him on. This is her arc for the first three-quarters of the film, so you little expect to see her taking names by the end of it. That she does, though, and when Silar (Michael Fassbender) informs Rose that Jay loved her with all her heart (which she has just accidentally shot him in, by the way), she replies, sadly but confidently, that his was in the wrong place.