10 Supporting Movie Characters Who Deserve Their Own Film

The Coen brothers’ movies are littered with great side characters, from Bernie Bernbaum in Miller’s Crossing to A Serious Man’s Sy Ableman. Perhaps their most fascinating character, though, is Anton Chigur, the mysterious avenging angel played to Oscar winning perfection by Javier Bardem in No Country For Old Men.

Chigur, the mercenary hitman with a penchant for self surgery and creative murder, was devised by legendary author Cormac McCarthy, on whose novel the Coens’ film was based, but Bardem takes what’s on the page and elevates it to something instantly iconic.

He has a ludicrous haircut. He speaks softly and slowly, and he makes life and death decisions on the basis of a coin toss. All the same, he’s one of the most chilling film characters ever invented. He has ulterior motives and seems to move through life as though following the course of a mysterious destiny.

He steals every scene in the film, and there’s so much of the character that we never get to learn. Perhaps therein lies the majesty of the creation, but he’s a character we’d love to spend more time with - on screen, anyway.