10 Greatest Christmas Movie Villains Ever
8. The Duke Brothers (Trading Places)
Randolph and Mortimer Duke are the best kind of villains. They commit their dreadful deeds not out of necessity or greed, but of a simple love of chaos. Christmas can be a time for arguments, and Trading Places is built around a doozy of a debate: nature vs nurture.
Dan Aykroyd’s high born toff and Eddie Murphy’s wisecracking street hustler are dealt a reversal of fortune, and the brothers watch on to see whether the two will thrive in their new roles, or revert to their original statuses. The monied malcontents are delightfully and pointlessly fiendish, causing untold chaos in their own business for the sake of winning an argument.
In a delightful moment late in the film, it transpires that they have placed a stake of one dollar on the outcome. Special mention must go to the late Paul Gleason as the Duke brothers’ fixer, who delivers one of cinema’s all time great F bombs to an old lady trying to use a phone booth.
Trading Places isn’t exclusively a Christmas film, but it features many key elements you might find at a family gathering: arguing, resentment, uncomfortable racism. The film holds up fantastically well (apart from the regrettable blacking up scene), and deserves a place in the festive pantheon.