Checklist: 5 Underrated Film Villains

1. Mola Ram from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984). 

   Iconic Bollywood actor Amrish Puri, typecast for countless villain roles in his native India, was cast by Spielberg to play the thuggee cult leader. Chilling heart ripping sequences aplenty and one of the finest maniacal cackles ever heard made him unforgettable, yet noticeably absent from AFI's 100 Villains list.

2. Brandon Shaw from Rope (1948).

   Alfred Hitchcock's great experiment, with its miniscule cast and marathon takes, centres upon on the underhanded deception of two murderous young intellectuals. Homosexual undercurrents in abundance for queer theorists and remarkable performances from John Dall and (to a lesser extent) Farley Granger set this duo apart from villains of Hitch's other projects. It is the callous, aloof Brandon who is the bolder of the two, coldly defiant in the face of James Stewart's inquisitive schoolmaster. 

3. L'il Dice/Li'l Zé from City of God (2002).

   An exteme case of the picked on little boy turned sociopathic murderer. L'il Dice commits an almost gleeful hotel massacre as a child and ruthless acts of aggression towards rival drug dealers, rape and vengeful murder as a young man. One particularly heinous act of cruelty on a helpless child present the villain of Fernando Merelles and Kátia Lund's film as a disturbing representation of what a difficult upbringing in the slum suburbs of Rio de Janeiro could produce.

4. Cypher from The Matrix (1999).

   While Hugo Weaving may have stolen the villain show as the seemingly unstoppable Agent Smith, the traitorous Cypher is a far more interesting character than his relatively small role would suggest. Displaying far more depth and humanity than most of Morpheus' band of rebels put together, this tired and cynical man attempts to cut a deal with the tenacious Agents in order to return to the blissful ignorance of living in The Matrix. His betrayal leads him to murder and ultimately to his own death. A genuinely human element in a film bursting with stone-faced (dare I say 'machine-like'?) characters. Played capably by Joe Pantoliano.

     

  

   5. Alec Travelyan (006) in Goldeneye (1995)

  

   The most (and arguably the only) intriguing aspect of Martin Campbell's film is the turncoat 00 agent, played by Sean Bean. Brosnan's Bond is faced with the prospect of having to defeat his friend, who he long believed to have died years before. The bitterness of Travelyan at the British treatment of his Soviet family at the conclusion of World War II is a reasonably credible back-story and the concept of 007 facing an agent who possesses the same training and abilities as he adds a bit of spice to the usual Bond formula. The last Bond film to still openly embrace Cold War attitudes has a treasonous villain often overlooked in comparison to the Blofelds and Scaramangas of past outings.