Undercover DEA agent and part-time drug dealer
Billionaire manufacturer and weapons dealer
This weekend offers one of Paul Walker’s final screen appearances in the action flick BRICK MANSIONS, a remake of the French movie DISTRICT B13 (aka BANLIEUE 13) from writer/producer Luc Besson.
Flipping through Besson’s filmography, he was once gracious enough to deliver Gary Oldman in back-to-back roles, a pair of distinctly different but equally memorable villains: manic lowlife DEA agent Norman Stansfield (LEON: THE PROFESSIONAL) and calculating industrialist Jean-Baptiste Emanuel Zorg (THE FIFTH ELEMENT). Who’s the better bad guy?
(Please note: Face Off is an opinion column. We’re not using any actual science to prove or disprove anything. It’s just for fun.)
-Mathilda (Natalie Portman), a 12-year-old assassin-in-training seeking revenge on Stansfield for the murder of her family
-Leeloo (Milla Jovovich), the ass-kicking Fifth Element
-pump-action 12-gauge shotgun
-Threatens numerous innocents
-Beats the hell out of Danny Aiello
-Dispatches dozens of police officers to certain death
-Shoots Leon in the back before he can escape
-Kills his right-hand man via telephone
-Blows up a few alien mercenaries
-Guns down several cruise liner security staff members
-Shoots Leeloo through a ventilation shaft
– Grenades
– a cherry
-Norman: “I like these calm little moments before the storm. It reminds me of Beethoven. Can you hear it? It’s like when you put your head to the grass, and you can hear the growing, and you can hear the insects.”
-Norman: “You don’t like Beethoven? You don’t know what you’re missing. Overtures like that get my juices flowing. So powerful. But after his openings, to be honest, he does tend to get a little fucking boring.”
-Norman: “It’s always the same thing. It’s when you start to become really afraid of death that you learn to appreciate life. Do you like life, sweetheart?”
Mathilda: “Yes.”
Norman: “That’s good, because I take no pleasure in taking life if it’s from a person who doesn’t care about it.”
-Norman: “Death is… whimsical… today.”
-Norman: “Bring me everyone.”
Benny: “What do you mean, everyone?”
Norman: “EEEVVERRRYYYOOONNNEEE!!!”
-Priest Vito Cornelius: “You’re a monster, Zorg.”
Zorg: “I know.”
-Zorg: “I don’t like warriors. Too narrow-minded, no subtlety. And worse, they fight for hopeless causes. Honor? Huh! Honor’s killed millions of people, it hasn’t saved a single one. Tell you what I do like though: a killer. A dyed-in-the-wool killer. Cold-blooded, clean, methodical and thorough. Now a real killer, when he picked up the ZF-1, he would have immediately asked about the little red button on the bottom of the gun.”
-Zorg: “If you want something done, do it yourself! Yep!”
But while Zorg was a uniquely odd and despicable 23rd century asshole, he was ultimately just a lackey for an otherworldly malevolent force. Oldman’s performance as the sweaty, seething madman in LEON has earned its rightful place on the list of all-time greatest villains, if only for his meme-generating delivery of a single word: EVERYONE!!!