In an acting career spanning over fifty years, Kurt Russell has carved out many a memorable character in the public consciousness. He’s stolen the show in comedies, kids movies, and romantic dramas, but he’s known best for his unbreakably badass action heroes.
Russell has stared down the roughest gunslingers, genetically enhanced super-soldiers, actual cannibal hordes, and just about every type of menacing alien you could think of. Not only does he barely seem to ever break a sweat, but he’s also got a memorable line locked and loaded, too. Here are our picks for Kurt Russell’s ten most badass movie quotes.
“Quiet! Ask about horses again, I’ll slap you red.”
Kurt Russell is a very versatile actor, but there are a couple of roles that he plays better than any other working actor. His Elvis impersonation is probably his most well-known persona, but coming in at a close second is his John Wayne impression, making Russell one of the premier Western actors of contemporary cinema.
His most memorable of late came in S. Craig Zahler’s seriously gory Western Bone Tomahawk in which Russell plays the hard-nosed town sheriff, Franklin Hunt. When trying to get the facts straight about a bloody attack by a group of cannibals, Hunt loses his short temper with a townsperson more concerned with their missing horses than the loss of life. Hunt’s reaction puts him right in his place.
“You gonna do something or just stand there and bleed?”
The first of several quotes on this list from Kurt Russell’s take on the legendary Wild West lawman Wyatt Earp comes in the form of a fearless challenge to one of the many enemies that Earp finds in the legendary Tombstone, Arizona.
After slapping the offending man in the face and telling him to pull out his weapon, he slaps him again and tells him to “throw down." Earp slaps him a third time—so hard that the man’s mouth begins to bleed. Earp’s unwavering death stare putting the fear of God into him and anyone else watching before asking his badass rhetorical question.
“Give my regards to King Tut, a**hole.”
Long before it was spun off into multiple TV shows, and before the role of Colonel Jack O’Neil was picked up by original MacGyver actor Richard Dean Anderson, Kurt Russell put the name Stargate on the map with his performance as the badass soldier dealing with alien gods on a faraway planet.
The alien antagonists of the movie are established as being the basis for the Egyptian gods, with their advanced technology appearing to be magic to ancient human beings when they visited Earth. Before using one of the alien beaming devices to decapitate his foe, Jack tells him to give his regards to the late pharaoh and bags a truly unique one-liner in the process.
“You die first, get it? Your friends might get me in a rush, but not before I make your head into a canoe, you understand me?”
How does one turn another man’s head into a canoe? What does that even look like? It doesn't seem like you'd really want to know, and that’s probably the point. Another of Wyatt Earp’s fearless showdowns, this time with the infamous Clanton family, prompts the line in George P. Cosmatos’ Tombstone.
The winner of a small rivalry between competing biographical Wyatt Earp projects in the mid-90s, Tombstone became the eventual victor thanks in no small part to Russell’s stone-faced delivery of lines like this. Though the other project, simply titled Wyatt Earp, was severely underrated at the time, and it was undeniably never as badass as Russell made Tombstone.
“Get a new President.”
The second team-up between Kurt Russell and director John Carpenter produced one of their most iconic characters and a byword for badassery in modern popular culture. Legendary former soldier Snake Plissken is busted after a heist and sentenced to live out the rest of his days inside the walls of the sprawling Manhattan island prison.
Had Snake been sent in as a regular inmate, he probably would have just escaped. But, unfortunately for him, Air Force One crashes inside the prison walls just as he’s being processed, meaning he’s the only choice to mount a one-man rescue. Snake’s total aversion to authority, however, prompts the brilliantly cold response to a request that any other hero, or even anti-hero, would leap willingly at.
“Son of a b**** must pay.”
One of the more underrated creations of Kurt Russell and John Carpenter, Jack Burton from Big Trouble in Little China has grown over the decades to become a cult movie icon. From his sense of style to his lovably cocky motor mouth, Jack has cemented himself into cinematic culture perhaps even more so than Snake Plissken.
On a journey involving ancient gods and magical curses, Jack is pitted against an increasingly colorful array of bad guys that he responds to with hilariously nonplussed reactions. His confident reaction to a group of kidnapping street thugs is one of his best, though.
*Growl*
In Paul W.S. Anderson’s mostly-forgotten pseudo-sequel to Blade Runner, Russell plays a soldier trained literally from birth to be a cold, calculating warrior. When he’s outshined, beaten, and left for dead by a newer genetically engineered model, however, he’s literally tossed out with the garbage onto a derelict planet.
On his new home, he’s forced to defend a group of castaways that are as disposable as he is. They become target practice for the new wave of soldiers, and it’s up to Russell’s character, Todd 3465, to protect them all single-handedly—Rambo style. When Todd takes one of the enemy’s radios, viewers would expect him to make a fearsome speech. Instead, he does something far more badass and simply growls into the microphone with primal rage.
“We’re not gettin’ outta here alive, but neither is that Thing.”
Kurt Russell and John Carpenter’s most enduring creation, often cited as the greatest cinematic remake of all time and one of the best horror movies ever made to boot, The Thing is full of unforgettable moments. One of the movie’s most unique qualities, which has long been considered the reason why it was a critical and commercial failure upon release and a cult hit on reappraisal, is its flat out nihilism.
Russell’s character, MacReady, is an untrusting man, but he's the perfect match for an alien that must outthink its prey in order to survive. Their battle of wits becoming almost semi-poetic as MacReady embraces his own death in exchange for victory over his opponent.
“You tell 'em I’m coming, and hell’s coming with me! You hear!? Hell’s coming with me!”
After attempting to leave the violent days of his lawman career behind him, Wyatt Earp finds himself at a breaking point after being pushed too far by his rivalry with the Clanton family and the associated Cowboy gang. Earp’s unforgiving gunslinger side emerging again with a vengeance.
After two of the Clantons try to assassinate members of Earp’s family, Wyatt shoots one dead but leaves the other alive. He walks up to the cowering assassin, slices his face with his spur, and sends him to inform his cohorts of Earp’s reinstatement as a U.S. Marshall, as well as his impending wrath.
“Say goodbye to my wife. I’ll say hello to yours.”
Though it may sound like some kind of a put down when taken out of context, nothing could be further from the truth. The line is said sincerely, and it forms the emotional crescendo of Bone Tomahawk after several unbearably tense and emotional scenes.
After it becomes apparent that sheriff Hunt isn’t going to be able to make it back from his mission to take out a lair of cannibalistic troglodytes, he elects to stay behind and cover the escapees. Knowing that he’s on death’s doorstep, he says farewell to his loyal deputy by telling him to inform his soon-to-be widow of his fate and that he will greet his deputy’s deceased wife on the other side in return.