3. James Bond - Casino Royale
The Hero: Arguably the most popular action hero of all time, James Bond is suave, sophisticated, good at punching people, good with the ladies, and (in this movie) good at being kind of broody, too. Bond's mission in
Casino Royale involves stopping a banker from financing terrorist activities, which he does with alplomb whilst travelling from Madagascar to Miami to Montenegro, whilst also finding time to shack up with a beautiful woman called Vesper. All in all, another successful mission for the world's coolest secret agent, right?
Jail? You Can't Be Serious? I don't know the exact intricate details of how a "license to kill" works, but I'm pretty sure it doesn't mean "doing whatever you want, and if innocent people get killed in the process,
oh well." Because for a lot of this movie, that's how James Bond treats this wonderful privilege - as an excuse to put the public in danger and break as many rules as possible, all whilst not feeling that bad about it. Take the first scene in the movie, where James chases down a bomb-making suspect who is super good at parkour, where at least two innocent people are glimpsed falling to their deaths or getting set on fire. Bond chases this suspect into a foreign embassy, where he decides it's okay to battle against actual soldiers, and goes on to, like, shoot up the building. Then he freakin' executes the suspect at close range and shoots a gas canister when he's surrounded by heavily-armed guards, which we can only presume critically injures a bunch of them. I mean... is this okay? Is it supposed to be fine because it's Africa or something? Aside from all the international incidents that Bond causes with this streak of mayhem, how would the man keep his job after he wandered into an embassy and fired his gun about like a madman? Worse of all, all this is caught on a surveillance camera for everybody to see. Sure, M chews Bond up a bit when he gets back to London, but she also responds by instantly sending him on
another, more dangerous mission. Maybe M needs to cool off in a jail cell for a while, too?
Recommended Sentence: 10 years (license to kill revoked)