Top 3 movie scene-stealers

It is not always the top-billed stars that give the best performance

In pretty much every movie ever produced, it’s pretty clear who the protagonist and who the antagonist is. Writers will subtly direct you to who you are supposed to be cheering for and who you are meant to dislike. Secondary characters are mostly there to provide comic relief, exposition or further the plot.

Sometimes though, those secondary characters become so memorable that you borderline forget about the rest of the movie. They deliver performances that steal the scene in such a way that you never forget them.

Harvey Keitel – Pulp Fiction

Jules (Samuel Jackson) and Vincent Vega (John Travolta) are two ruthless enforcers who find themselves in a bit of a pickle: they accidentally shoot someone in their car, splattering blood and brains everywhere, and run the risk of being caught by the police. They seek refuge with one of Jules’ friends, who freaks out when he sees them and calls on a professional fixer to straighten everything out.

In comes Harvey Keitel as a mafia cleaner known as The Wolf. Where everyone is frantic, he is cool, collected, methodical and effective. He instructs both Jules and Vincent on how to best clean the car and even douses them with water to wash the blood off. When the two extremely dangerous killers decide to pipe up, he calmly puts them down and reminds them who is boss.

In a movie full of unforgettable characters, The Wolf manages to steal the scene and establish dominance!

Peter Stormare – Constantine

Chills, man. Even after so long, chills. Keanu Reeves stars as John Constantine, the occult detective who is dying of terminal lung cancer. Constantine is looking into what is probably going to be his final case, a plot by demons to take over the Earth despite an agreement between the forces of Heaven and Hell. Constantine is a despised figure on both sides and it is said that Hell hates him so much that when he dies, the Devil will come to collect his soul personally.

After a failed attempt at stopping the plot, Constantine plays his final card: he commits suicide so he can chat with the Lord of Hell himself.

Peter Stormare as Lucifer is truly terrifying. He doesn’t appear as a demon but rather as a man wearing a white suit. The only thing that gives him away is his feet. He oozes black tar as if Hell is leaking out into the world. Stormare’s performance is captivating: he doesn’t raise his voice, he doesn’t threaten, but every word he says carries power. He speaks with the certainty of someone who knows that he has already won and that any attempt to thwart him is futile.

He is charismatic and repulsive, beautiful yet disturbing, all wrapped into one. He is on screen for less than 10 minutes but delivers perhaps the best depiction of the Devil ever given in any movie.

Tom Cruise – Tropic Thunder

There are only two things that I remember from Tropic Thunder: Robert Downey Jr in blackface and Tom Cruise being the absolute best for nine minutes straight. Yeah, most people tend to forget that despite being kind of the main antagonist, Tom Cruise’s character Les Grossman gets less than 10 minutes of screen time.

And what glorious 10 minutes that is!

Grossman is the vulgar, profane, money-obsessed and completely devoid-of-empathy Hollywood executive who produces the in-universe movie. Grossman is supposed to be a caricature of power-hungry Hollywood execs and despite what people think, it was all Tom Cruise’s idea.

As the story goes, Cruise learned of the movie and got in contact with Ben Stiller – who starred in and produced it – to pitch the character. Stiller agreed and asked Cruise if he wanted to play the character since it was his idea. Cruise said “yes” but had two demands: to dance and to have fat hands. A dumbstruck Stiller agreed and gave Cruise room to develop Grossman.

Develop he did!

Cruise comes out of nowhere in a fat suit, with a receding hairline, prosthetic hands, dancing to a hip-hop tune and unleashing tirades that are both explicitly profane and hilarious! Audiences could not believe that was Tom Cruise, who at the time was one of Hollywood’s biggest A-list stars. He is funny, twisted to a degree that is almost unbelievable, and absolutely made the movie what it was.