Top Ten Assassination Movies

The more you know about Apocalypse Now the more you realize this is more than a movie, it’s a Hollywood legend… almost a fairy tale. The film itself stands alone in terms of its unique inspiration on the generations of war films to follow, not to mention this year’s comedy Tropic Thunder. The film follows Captain Benjamin L. Willard (Martin Sheen) as he heads into the Vietnam jungle to kill one of his own, Colonel Walter E. Kurtz (Marlon Brando) who has lost his mind and has become something akin to a God among a local tribe and has murdered hundreds of innocents in his new found kingdom. It’s dark and it’s intense and it is a classic in every sense of the word.

What first starts out as a film about a group of killers out to kill some cowboys that cut up a prostitute turns into so much more when an unarmed man forgets to arm himself after decorating his saloon with William Munny’s friend. Unforgiven walks the line of bounty hunter, revenge and assassination film, but make no mistake about it, William Munny is out to kill. Don’t take my word for it, he says everything that needs to be said about the matter:

All right, I’m coming out. Any man I see out there, I’m gonna shoot him. Any son of a bitch takes a shot at me, I’m not only gonna kill him, but I’m gonna kill his wife, all his friends, and burn his damn house down.

Taking a different look at the assassination film we come to Oliver Stone’s JFK, which takes a thorough look at the aftermath of the John F. Kennedy assassination and is easily Oliver Stone’s best film to date. I have talked about this film plenty in my recent Will There Ever be Another ‘JFK’?, so many of you that follow the site regularly probably expected this film to be toward the top.

With Collateral you have Tom Cruise at the absolute top of his game, Jamie Foxx in his Oscar-nominated Supporting role and a Michael Mann feature I enjoy even more than Heat. I expected very little of this film when I screened it in 2004, not quite sure if Tom Cruise could convince me he was a killer for hire. As it turned out he convinced me to the point that Collateral is now among my all-time favorite films. Strangely enough, like JFK, I recently posted a pair of scenes from this flick, but feel this one better suits this list…

NOTE: And for anyone that sees the fact a Tom Cruise movie is #1 on a list sponsored by a Tom Cruise movie is a strange coincidence I can only hope you trust that is exactly what it is. Collateral was my #1 film of 2004 (article here) and you can read my theatrical review here in which I gave it an “A”.


Now, you tell me… Do you agree? Disagree? What films would you add and what films would you take off? Sound off below!

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