From Robert De Niro to Shah Rukh Khan: Legendary villians of the silverscreen

These men lorded over their empires of crime. With the release of Don 2 around the corner, ET on Sunday picks the most effective reel life crime bosses. A caveat: we look at only those whose criminal empires had a profit motive. Global destruction is not a business model. So, Blofeld or Dr Dang doesn’t make it to our list

Al Capone ( Robert De Niro)
Movie: The Untouchables
Modus Operandi: Control over alcohol distribution and the speakeasies in the Prohibition era were the bread and butter of Capone’s business empire. Snitches had their skulls caved in with a baseball bat. Enemies were gunned down and their establishments bombed.
Killer Quote - “You can get further with a kind word and a gun than you can with just a kind word”

Loin (Ajit)
Movie: Kalicharan (1976)
Modus Operandi: Never has a mispronunciation worked out so grandly. ‘Loin’ aka Din Dayal was a saboteur, smuggler and black-marketer — the lion of the criminal world.
Killer Quote - “Saara shehar mujhe loin ke naam se jaanta hai”(The city knows me as loin)

Tiger Memon (Pavan Malhotra)
Movie: Black Friday (2004)
Modus Operandi: The mastermind of the Mumbai blasts of 1993, Tiger started off as a smuggler of gold and silver. He graduated to RDX. With his Mumbaiya Hindi, Pathani suits and blazing eyes, he was among the scariest gang lords from B-town.
Killer Quote - “Akkha Mumbai jala daloonga” (I will burn down Mumbai)

Tony Montana (Al Pacino)
Movie: Scarface (1983)
Modus Operandi: Killers with chainsaws and machine guns tried to kill him. In vain. Montana, a Cuban immigrant in the US, took over the drug business in Miami. Eventually, he was gunned down by the henchmen Colombian drug cartel chief, Alejandro Sosa.
Killer Quote - “Say hello to my little friend” (Holding an M16 assault rifle and M203 grenade launcher)

Don Vito Corleone (Marlon Brando)
Movie: The Godfather (1972), The Godfather 2 (1974)
Modus Operandi: The baap of all gangsters. With his choked voice, puffed cheeks and understated menace, this was Marlon Brando’s crowing glory. Robert DeNiro followed up with a prequel in which the Don’s voice got thicker, the cheeks thinner and the menace edgier.
Killer Quote - “I spent my whole life trying not to be careless. Women and children can afford to be careless, but not men”

Maharani (Sadashiv Amrapurkar)
Movie: Sadak (1991)
Modus Operandi: An evil eunuch who bosses over the flesh trade, Maharani was a first in Bollywood. With kohl-lined eyes and a red bindi, Maharani was really creepy.
Killer Quote - “Yehan ka raja, is jism ke bazaar ka maharaja aur naam, maharani” (The king of this place, the emperor of flesh trade and my name is Maharani)

Shaktivelu Nayakar ( Kamal Haasan)
Movie: Nayakan (1987)
Modus Operandi: Mani Rathnam’s inspired version of The Godfather, is a classic. Nayakar’s character is based on the Varadaraja Mudaliar who controlled Mumbai’s underworld in the 80s.
Killer Quote – “Naan adichha, nee sethhuduvai" (If I hit you back, you will die)

Hon Sam (Eric Tsang)
Movie: Infernal Affairs I & II (2002, 2003)
Modus Operandi: A baby-faced, portly midget is hardly anybody’s idea of a villain. But that’s Hon Sam — the biggest drug lord of Hong Kong. Cocaine is his speciality. The first part has Sam at his feral best — swinging deals, spouting one-liners that make James Bond look like an idiot with a speech impediment. The prequel is the story of how Sam becomes the drug lord from just being a lowly henchman.
Killer Quote - “What thousands must die, so that Caesar may become the great”

Leo O’Bannon (Albert Finney)
Movie: Miller’s Crossing (1990)
Modus Operandi: This ageing cigar-smoking, Scotch-swigging Irish gangster is an ‘artist with the Thomson’ (the Tommy gun and not the VCR, silly). His primary business: bootlegging and gambling in the Prohibition era in America. His Luca Brasi is a ferocious, gay hitman called Eddie Lane who spouts lines like ‘Up is down, black is white’.
Killer Quote - “Johnny, you’re exactly as big as I let you be, and no bigger, and don’t forget it, ever”

Don ( Amitabh Bachchan, Shah Rukh Khan)
Movie: Don (1978, 2006)
Modus Operandi: If the two Dons were to meet, they would walk past each other without even a double take. Height was not the only differentiator. The older one smuggled gold, the other pushed drugs. One smiled and the other smirked.
Killer Quote - “Don ko pakadna mushkil hi nahi, namumkin hai” (It’s not just difficult to catch don. It’s impossible)

Funniest Movie villian ever: DONG

There are several reasons to watch Tehelka (1992). If you want to watch Aditya Pancholi, Jaaved Jaffri and Naseeruddin Shah prance around in bikinis; this might be the movie for you. But the biggest reason is the bad guy, played by Amrish Puri. He is a maniacal dictator of a Himalayan nation. He is called Dong. He dresses like Dumbledore, has his flunkies give him the Nazi salute and bursts into a song which goes “Shom shom shom” to which he plays the veena. Dong also has a punchline “Dong kabhi wrong nahi hota” (Dong never gets it wrong).

HONOURABLE MENTIONS

Mallik in Company: Shades, moustache and a dangling cigarette. Ajay Devgn was Dawood personified, minus the chubbiness.

Gabbar in Sholay: A rural crime boss. Amjad Khan bullied the folks at Ramgarh with his motley collection of men, who extorted sacks of grain from local farmers.

Le Chiffre in Casino Royale: Brilliant poker player, who wept tears of blood literally. Shorted airline stocks even as he sabotaged their planes. Assassinated but not before he gave a naked James Bond the beating of a lifetime.

Mogambo in Mr India: Despite the grandiose plans to launch missiles at India, Amrish Puri’s business empire included evicting poor do-gooders and food adulteration.

Marcellus Wallace in Pulp Fiction: Fixer of boxing matches and smuggler of something that glows golden in light, Wallace probably never recovered from the sexual assault he suffered.

Seymon in Eastern Promises: Beatific-eyed, avuncular restaurant owner turns out to be Russian mafia kingpin.

Godmother in Godmother: Shabana Azmi is a ruthless and unapologetic female gangster.

Paul Vitti in Analyze This & Analyze That: The mobster at the verge of a nervous breakdown. De Niro parodied himself to box office glory.

Lenny Cole in RocknRolla: An old world mobster who deals in real estate, Cole eventually has his legs broken and then drowned to death.