10 Movie Henchmen Who Stole Movies From Villains

John Woo's action masterpiece Hard Boiled (and to be clear, he has like five of them) is peak heroic bloodshed cinema, pairing Chow Yun-Fat with Tony Leung in what at first appears to be a tense game of cat and mouse, but eventually unfurls into a balletic buddy cop spectacle for the ages.

But while Tequila and Alan steal the show as one of cinema's greatest action duos, they're also given a memorable threat to face in Philip Kwok's Mad Dog - a heavy who works under Hard Boiled's chief villain, Anthony Wong's Johnny. Kwok - a stunt performer who had risen to prominence in Hong Kong as part of the Venom Mob group - is introduced partway through the film and immediately proceeds to out-do Tequila and Alan on the coolness front, laying waste to multiple rival gangsters before lighting his cigarette in the raging flames of a destroyed car.

Mad Dog gets plenty more highlights throughout the film, with Kwok's rugged nimbleness matching Yun-Fat and Leung beat-for-beat. He actually somehow gets cooler following that introduction, sporting an eyepatch in the iconic hospital sequence and giving his competitors a run for their money with a single-shot, high-calibre pistol.

The best part? Mad Dog gets to go out as an anti-hero, rather than just a straight-up foe. After Johnny massacres a bunch of patients, he attempts to slay his employer but unfortunately runs out of bullets to finish the job, getting gunned down immediately afterwards. As far as killers with a strong moral ethic go (and there have been a lot of them over the years), Mad Dog has to rank among the top tier.