4. Kevin McAllister - Home Alone
With a mediocre 54% on Rotten Tomatoes and two-and-a-half stars from Roger Ebert, Home Alone definitely pings on the "guilty" side of the pleasure scale. Even Kevin Smith had no compunction about shooting off a snarky one-liner in Dogma, despite the fact that he might be a John Hughes fan:
"Yeah, the one about the kid, by himself in his house, burglars trying to get in and he fights them off? I had nothing to do with that one. Somebody sold their soul to Satan to get the grosses up on that piece of sh*t."
But enough about whether or not one needs to feel guilty about genuinely enjoying Home Alone. On to the fact that an eight-year-old boy essentially captures and tortures two career burglars. Kevin would have been ineligible for this list if the whole movie was just 90 minutes of him inadvertently and accidentally thwarting Harry and Marv, oblivious to the danger involved they represent. On the contrary: Kevin knows full well that he's dealing with wanted criminals. Not only does he have the icy nerve to go full-on vigilante before his testicles have descended, Kevin has the strategic mastery to identify the likely entrance points and methods into the house and the MacGyver-like smarts to booby trap them all with Christmas ornaments and household appliances. Sure, the traps are played for laughs and pitfalls, and if Harry and Marv were any brighter they wouldn't be nailed by them, but the implications are still pretty serious: a switched-on iron to the face? Performing a George of the Jungle into the side of a brick house? Getting your skull roasted by a blowtorch? While Old Man Marley ends up saving the day for Kevin with his snow shovel, his last-minute rescue does nothing to undermine the ingenuity of Kevin's traps or his cavalier attitude about defending the family turf from home invaders. If there's any justice in the Home Alone universe, Kevin will go on to specialize in urban combat.