In Defence Of Last Action Hero
2. Charles Dance's Villain Is The 90s Icon That Never Was
While this is a Schwarzenegger movie through and through, Charles Dance very nearly wrestles it away from him several times with his deliciously, darkly comic performance as antagonist Mr. Benedict.
Though originally written to be a secondary antagonist with the Devil being the primary villain, rewrites smartly beefed-up Benedict's role, and almost two decades before he became known to a whole new generation in Game of Thrones, he delivered a villainous performance very nearly as great.
Benedict begins the movie as a lackey of sorts to the "true" baddie, Tony Vivaldi (a slumming but enjoyable Anthony Quinn), but through his continued exasperation with Vivaldi's idiocy - including Vivaldi's constant butchering of classic idioms - he eventually murders his boss and goes into business for himself. Not before hilariously dubbing him a "spaghetti-slurping cretin", of course.
Dance is so fantastic here that, had the movie gotten the marketing and release it deserved, Benedict could've been remembered as one of the best and most iconic action movie villains of the 90s. The world isn't just, of course, and Dance never received sufficient accolades for his work outside of cult circles.
After all, the sequence where he enters New York City, murders a man and is both delighted and stunned at the lack of repercussions for his actions, is worth the price of admission alone ("I just murdered a man and I want to confess!").
As Benedict quips to the camera, in a wonderfully smarmy British accent no less, "If God was a villain, he'd be me," he manages to walk a delicate line between delicious ham and bone-chilling cool. The fact that he tells young Danny, "I have killed people younger and smarter than you", in a PG-13 movie no less, only cements how brilliantly he avoids making Benedict a goofy caricature, especially considering the false eye and all.
In the film's climax, Benedict even tells Slater, "In this world, the bad guys can win!", and Dance is so damn good you might almost believe him.