Joel and Ethan Coen have been responsible for creating some of the most indelible screen characters over the past three and a half decades. With Joel Coen's new film The Tragedy of Macbeth set to open the 2021 New York Film Festival this fall, chances are very high that yet another iconic character will be added to his sterling cinematic resume.
While the Coen brothers often slalom between comedy and drama, many of their biggest and most memorable movie baddies reside firmly in the world of high-stakes crime, organized or amateur and alike.
Jeffrey Lebowski - The Big Lebowski
When the cloudy haze clears, the elderly Jeffrey Lebowski (David Huddleston) turns out to be the evil duplicitous villain responsible for the convoluted crime plot of the beloved cult comedy.
Not only does Lebowski lie about being his vast wealth, but he also refuses to pay the ransom for his kidnapped wife. He keeps the ransom money from the family trust for himself, forcing the other Lebowski (Jeff Bridges) and his friends to go on a wild goose chase that ends up costing Donnie (Steve Buscemi) his life. As the title suggests, it was The Big Lebowski all along.
Big Dave Brewster - The Man Who Wasn't There
Played by Tony Soprano himself, James Gandolfini, Big Dave Brewster is an evil and intimidating villain who springboards the entire plot of The Man Who Wasn't There. The story follows Ed Crane (Billy Bob Thornton), an unassuming barber who gets mixed up in murder and mayhem.
When Ed learns Dave is having an affair with his wife, he attempts to blackmail him. Dave not only embezzles money from his own department store to pay Ed, but he also fatally beats the man who tipped Ed before blaming the barber for stealing the money. Later, Dave tries to brutally murder Ed, making him a thief, adulterer, and killer.
Daniel Teague - O Brother, Where Art Thou?
Based on Homer's monstrous cyclops Polyphemus, Daniel Teague (John Goodman) is a duplicitous Klu Klux Klan member in the Coen's comedy O Brother, Where Art Thou? The pretend bible salesman robs the three leads in the film and attempts to kill one of them when they're transformed into a toad.
Despite his odious intentions and affiliations, Teague is ultimately played for more laughs than villainous thrills, dropping his status down a few pegs in the pantheon of Coen baddies.
Bernie Bernbaum - Miller's Crossing
Miller's Crossing is a gangster film full of unsavory characters, including protagonist Tom Regan (Gabriel Byrne). In trying to appease rival gangs, Regan encounters bookie Bernie Bernbaum (John Turturo), a conniving baddie who reneges on his word and makes Tom's life a living hell.
Hired to kill Bernie at Miller's Crossing, Tom fakes the death and lets Bernie go free. Instead of disappearing as planned, Bernie kills Tom's associate Mink (Steve Buscemi) and his protective crime boss Caspar (Jon Polito), putting Tom in a terrible position as a result. Tom showed Bernie mercy, only for Bernie to repay him with murderous betrayal.
Charlie Meadows - Barton Fink
If Charlie Meadows (John Goodman) weren't a figment of writer Barton Fink's (John Turturo) imagination, he'd be ranked higher. Still, the chipper insurance salesman hiding his true identity as serial killer Karl "Madman" Mundt is as villainous as they come.
Barton is a serious playwright hired to write fluffy Hollywood scripts. Saddled with writer's block, Barton meets his next-door neighbor Charlie at the Hotel Earle and begins to find inspiration for his script. While he conjures the character in his mind, Charlie is revealed to be a notorious serial killer who lights the hotel ablaze and fatally shoots several detectives in the hall. In a weird way, the imaginary villain helps Barton complete his script.
Leonard Smalls - Raising Arizona
Played for heightened comedic effect, the burly post-apocalyptic biker Leonard Smalls (Randall "Tex" Cobb) in Raising Arizona is humorous and horrifying in equal measure. The biker bounty hunter offers his services to find Nathan Jr., the baby kidnapped by H.I. (Nicolas Cage).
When Nathan Sr. refuses to pay the $50,000 reward, Leonard callously plans to sell the baby on the black market. With "all the powers of hell at his command," Leonard even launches grenades at cute roadside bunny rabbits and fires shotguns at lizards for fun. Leonard is so terrifying that he literally haunts H.I.'s dreams.
Loren Visser - Blood Simple
In the Coen brothers' ultra-violent neo-noir feature debut Blood Simple, all of the main characters are villainous to a certain degree. However, the biggest baddie of them all is Loren Visser (M. Emmett Walsh), a sleazy Texas private-eye who betrays his contract and turns into a homicidal maniac.
Marty (Dan Hedaya) hires Visser to prove his wife's infidelity. When he does so, Marty pays Visser to kill his wife and her lover. Visser fakes their deaths, kills Marty instead, keeps his money, and ends up in an ultra-violent showdown with two adulterers. Visser's self-serving mendacity is matched by his murderous motives, making him the vilest villain in a movie full of them.
Tom Chaney - True Grit
Josh Brolin gives a mean and menacing turn as Tom Chaney in True Grit, the notorious killer of Mattie Ross's (Hailee Steinfeld) father that springboards her entire revenge campaign. When Mattie finds and shoots Chaney, he shakes off the wound, holds her hostage, and prepares to kill the 14-year-old girl without hesitation.
As the clear-cut villain who drives the plot, Chaney isn't bound by modern laws and rules and operates without any sense of moral obligation. With his alarming accent and willingness to kill innocent children in an instant, Chaney's villainy can't be overstated.
Gaear Grimsrud - Fargo
Like many Coen crime films, it's often hard to differentiate who the good guys and bad guys are. In Fargo, most of the characters involved in the central kidnapping are various shades of bad. But, the worst of them all is Gaear Grimsrud (Peter Stormare), the unruly and short-tempered criminal who slaughters his own partner, among others.
Gaear is an uncooperative criminal whose selfish decisions only cause more trouble for him and his accomplice Carl Showalter (Steve Buscemi). After needlessly killing a cop and a motorist witness, Gaear turns on his pal and grinds him up in a woodchipper.
Anton Chigurh - No Country For Old Men
The phantom-like stalker who relentlessly tracks his prey with a sound suppressed shotgun and a giant cattle bolt gun, Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem), is the Coen brothers' biggest, boldest, and most baleful movie villain to date. For his bone-chilling performance, Bardem won an Oscar for Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role.
As the personification of pure evil, Chigurh is a ruthless criminal and indefatigable killing machine who icily shoots multiple people to get his hands on stolen drug money, leading to his intense search for the protagonist Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin).