4. Navajas - Desperado
Desperado is famous as a slice of bitchingly sweet action film wizardry, but a lesser-known fact about it is that was on its set that Rodriguez realised that Danny Trejo was his second cousin. Seriously, he cast the guy before he knew anything about it and was pleasantly surprised at the revelation. Yet regardless of that accidental nepotism, Trejo's still pretty damn cool in this film. As I've already discussed in Machete, Rodgriguez seems to know just how to place Trejo in his films. It goes a little something like this have him act menacing, then give him something cool to do. In this case, Trejo's character Navajas is a dab hand at bringing the pain with throwing knives. And my, does he. He obliterates Steve Buscemi, gets El Mariachi on the ropes (a hard ask) and almost, almost survives a drive-by. Sure, he ends up filleted by no small amount of bullets, but the small amount of on-screen time showed him to be a memorable badass of the highest order. After all, who clambers atop a car of armed men and take them out with nought but dinnerware? Nutters, that's who.