The 100 greatest movie hitmen, ranked by how good they are at their job

One of the first big surprises of Richard Linklater’s surprising new film Hit Man, now streaming on Netflix, is its early dispelling of the film’s titular, fictional profession. Linklater loops up a brief cinematic essay, showing us the history of almost a century of Hollywood hitmen and how the idea wove itself into the American mythos. Meanwhile, Glen Powell — as the film’s protagonist — explains that the idea is a silly fantasy. There aren’t any real people whose job is waiting around for you to find them on the internet and offer them a few thousands dollars to make your problems disappear in some remote marsh.

And yet the idea of the hitman persists. It’s the romantic fantasy of a lone gun, living parasitically off the drama of life, love, hate, sex, and death. The dramatic possibilities are endless. In the hitman, we have our most overt metaphor for capitalism: an independent contractor, often doing the unpleasant work of large corporate enterprises (illicit or legitimate), who makes their living reluctantly and at the direct expense of others. As the idea of the hitman has evolved and been fleshed out by generations of screenwriters and directors, the job has been utilized as a metaphor: for legacies of trauma, the staleness of the American Dream, our soulless, conveyor-belt economy, the aspiration to achieve perfect discipline and the imperfect humanity that makes this aspiration folly, the questions of determinism, fate, chance, and our free will — and even as a metaphor for filmmaking itself.

But, perhaps far more importantly, hitmen are fucking cool. They’re hot, smart, dangerous, rich, suave killers, often played by our hottest and coolest stars at the apexes of their hotness and coolness. Their movies are usually fun summer blockbusters full of sex, murder, great outfits, and exotic locales, with dense plots you can invest as much or as little as you’d like in. Find me a person who doesn’t love a good hitman flick and I will show you a joyless bore.

So for my own personal enjoyment, and hopefully yours, I’ve decided to embark on an epic ranking of the 100 greatest hitmen in the history of cinema. But first, some criteria.

The following is a ranking of characters who have been tasked with killing a specific target for monetary compensation. And that last piece is crucial because it rules out killing for yourself in the interest of politics, revenge, power, or self defense. There can be elements of these motivating factors in any kill, but on a base level there needs to be a professional context. This means no serial killers, no vigilantes killing for “justice,” no ideological suicide bombers, and no hypnotism (apologies to The Manchurian Candidate, Bucky Barnes, and Reggie Jackson in The Naked Gun).

The catch is you don’t have to complete the kill, because we have, and I must repeat, we have to make room for shitty hitmen. Only by including people who are bad at the job can we truly appreciate the hitmen who are great at it.

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Tier 6: The Shitty Hitmen

100. Charley Partanna & Irene Walker (Jack Nicholson & Kathleen Turner), Prizzi’s Honor — Words can’t do justice to how awful Nicholson’s “yous guys” accent is in this, you have to find it online.

99. Owen Lift & Larry Donner (Danny DeVito & Billy Crystal), Throw Momma From the Train

98. Luca Brasi (Lenny Montana), The Godfather — Crazy, I know. But Brasi makes an incredible wedding toast, shows up to a meet as the least plausible double agent in the history of the mafia (refuses a drink and won’t shake hands to seal the arrangement), gets his hand stabbed, and is promptly garroted.

97. Jay (Neil Maskell), Kill List

95. Greg Portman (Tomas Arana), The Bodyguard — Maybe the dumbest hitman on this list. Portman has his target alone in a room at a party in Miami, and does nothing, then tries to kill her on stage at the Academy Awards while she’s receiving the Oscar for Best Actress?

94. The hitmen, Exiled — The great Johnnie To provides evidence that having good friends, or really any human attachment, kills hitman job performance.

93. Chuck Barris (Sam Rockwell), Confessions of a Dangerous Mind — The protagonist of George Clooney’s least bad movie claims he has killed 33 people, but the film doesn’t seem to believe it, and as a result, neither do we.

92. Seth (Paul Dano), Looper

91. The King’s Men, Killers of the Flower Moon — Disgusting, genocidal thieves stealing land and generational wealth from their neighbors — and spouses. There is no art in their killing, and it’s happening basically in public, with a veil of institutional racism protecting the intimate horror they’re committing.

90. Philip Raven (Alan Ladd), This Gun for Hire

89. Alex Lewis (Liam Neeson), Memory

88. Harlen Maguire (Jude Law), Road to Perdition — Killed by:

87. Michael Sullivan (Tom Hanks), Road to Perdition

86. Vincent (John Travolta), Pulp Fiction — The record is as follows: He’s backup to Jules taking out a crew of stoned, Big Kahuna-eating debtors, whom he is nearly murdered by because of his poor attention to detail. He accidentally blows poor Phil LaMarr’s head off. He’s rude to The Wolf. And he leaves a machine gun in the kitchen of the apartment he’s supposed to be watching while he takes a shit, getting himself killed.

85. Ray & Ken (Colin Farrell & Brendan Gleeson), In Bruges — I love these two mismatched grouches stuck in a Belgisch purgatory, awaiting their fate, but one accidentally kills a kid, and one has a chance to complete an easy hit and blows it, resulting in his death.

84. Cappy Gordon (Jack Palance), Second Chance

83. Sierra Six (Ryan Gosling), The Gray Man

Tier 5: The Mediocre Hitmen

82. Ricky (Karl Scheydt), The American Soldier

81. Claude (Vince Edwards), Murder By Contract

80. Tom Reagan (Gabriel Byrne), Miller’s Crossing

79. Sun-woo (Lee Byung-hun), A Bittersweet Life

78. Frank Falenczyk (Ben Kingsley), You Kill Me

77. The Killer (Michael Fassbender), The Killer — The entirety of this film is about imperfection and fucking up the best laid plans, but the only contract kill we actually get is a fail.

76. Robert Rath (Sylvester Stallone), Assassins

75. Joe (Joseph Gordon Levitt), Looper — The guy just hangs out in a cornfield waiting for his target to appear from the future, bagged and tied, then blasts them with a shotgun. Not rocket science.

74. Jonathan Zimmermann (Bruno Ganz), The American Friend — I have written about Ganz as Zimmerman before. He’s the rare amateur killer, a mild-mannered picture framer willingly taking a contract to provide for his family because his terminal blood disease will soon kill him. But he needs Dennis Hopper as Tom Ripley to come in and clean up the second job he foolishly takes.

73. Frank Bono (Allen Baron), Blast of Silence

72. Henry Brogan (Will Smith), Gemini Man — I’ll be real. Both Will and his clone deserve way better than this in terms of skill and ability, but I’m arbitrarily deducting points because Ang Lee forgot to turn off motion smoothing.

71. John Deray (Michael Caine), The Marseille Contract

Tier 4: The Cartoon Characters

70. Jango Fett (Temuera Morrison), Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones — Boba Fett’s dad is the stem cell template for the Sith Lord’s clone army, but it’s not clear why. He subcontracts what seems like a pretty important hit on Princess Padme to Zam Wesell, who also sucks. Then he gets trampled by a reek and has his head cut off by Mace Windu.

69. John Wick (Keanu Reeves), John Wick: Chapter 2 — I know, I know. Hear me out. The only contract Baba Yaga actually takes is one he is forced into. Then the hit he’s going to be set up for taking basically kills herself before he can kill her, setting in motion the plot that will animate the next two films and ruin the lives of everyone John comes into contact with.

68. The Comedian (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), The Watchmen — Many conspiracy theories surround the Kennedy assassination, but my favorite is Zack Snyder’s “The Comedian did it.”

67. Tommy “Buns” Bundy (DMX), Belly — On the one hand, he kills Ox’s rival’s son, and puts on a full costume to do it. On the other, he’s recruited by a shadowy syndicate to kill Reverend Saviour, and instead ends up doing the good, just, and moral thing, but failing to carry out the contract. According to the rules of the exercise, we have to ding him here.

66. Chiquita (Paula Ouch), Belly

65. Tony Montana (Al Pacino), Scarface — It’s a one-for-two performance from Tony. Two hits that both make and unmake his life. Tony goes on to do many horrible things throughout the runtime of the film, but his one redemptive act is refusing to allow the remote detonation of a bomb on a car containing the family of an activist/journalist threatening cartel interests. The result is Sosa sending a hit squad to his house.

64. The Skull (Geno Silva), Scarface

63. The Fraternity, Wanted

62. Agent 47 (Timothy Olyphant), Hitman

61. Golgo 13 (Sonny Chiba), Golgo 13: Assignment Kowloon

60. Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson), Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation

59. Oddjob (Harold Sakata), Goldfinger — This is a representative placeholder for all the Bond henchmen and assassins, because you can’t do them justice without hijacking the entirety of this list. Oddjob perfectly captures the giddy cartoonishness of this saturation era of Summer Drive-In Bond Flicks. Would also have heard arguments for Jaws, Francisco “Pistols” Scaramanga, Fatima Blush, Mr. Wint and Mr. Kidd, Red Grant, The Three Blind Mice, Xenia Onatopp, and perhaps even Ernst Stavro Blofeld himself.

58. The Joker (Heath Ledger), The Dark Knight — I wouldn’t blame a critic for quibbling here. There are some arguments to be made that the Joker doesn’t actually want to kill Batman, because he says so himself. He obviously doesn’t complete the hit, but he takes half of every criminal dollar in Gotham, and nearly kills Batman.

57. Gogo Yubari (Chiaki Kuriyama), Kill Bill — Gogo is one of the few killers coming for The Bride because it’s her gig, rather than personal, and also arguably gets as close as anyone to finishing the job.

56. Hammer Girl (Julie Estelle), The Raid 2

55. El Mariachi (Antonio Banderas), Once Upon a Time in Mexico — It’s El Mariachi, man. This guy has a guitar case full of guns. What else do you need?

54. Django Freeman & Dr. King Schultz (Jamie Foxx & Christoph Waltz), Django Unchained

Tier 3: The Henchmen

53. The Boat Crew, The Usual Suspects

52. The Crazy 88, Kill Bill — How good can you be at your job if your entire crew of 88 trained assassins is taken out by a single six-foot-tall blonde in a tracksuit with a sword? I understand it’s The Bride and many, many other people failed where they did, but objectively, 88 trained assassins? 88 trained assassins!

51. Older Guy & John Boy (Keith David & Matt Bomer), The Nice Guys

50. The Soviets, Atomic Blonde

49. The One Armed Man/Sykes (Andreas Katsulas), The Fugitive

48. Jeanette, the Dutch Assassin (Marie-Josée Croze), Munich — The honey pot is a core phenotype in the hitman genre. Jeanette radiates sex and mystery — and, unfortunately, her perfume, which the team of assassins from Munich use to identify and eventually kill her in what is close to the movie’s best kill, no small distinction in this Spielberg classic.

47. Charlie (Jai Courtney), Jack Reacher — He takes out five people scattered around PNC Park in seconds in a masterfully suspenseful, patient scene. It’s a frame job, great filmmaking, and for our purposes, great shooting.

46. The team that kills Arthur Edens, Michael Clayton — By far the most efficient kill on this whole list. The sudden, brutal, clinical murder of Arthur is perhaps the greatest of the film’s many gut punches. The team also fucks up planting a bomb in Michael’s car, then loses Michael in a chase that essentially sets the endgame of the film into motion, but you’re not perfect either.

45. The hitters who pulled off the Baptism of Fire, The Godfather — After the murder of Sonny Corleone, Vito vows not to get revenge against the five families, but Michael doesn’t. We see him exact his terrible vengeance in a masterpiece of pacing and visual storytelling, one of the greatest montages in the history of cinema, as Michael stands as Godfather (an alibi) to his newborn nephew at his christening, and all the hitmen prep for their kills.

Tier 2: The Hitmen

44. Gary Johnson (Glen Powell), Hit Man — Gary Johnson destroys many lives, portraying a hitman to eager clients and selling them fantasies, but his actual “marks” are these hurt, angry, desperate people he’s conning (and taking money from to fulfill a hit, so, we’re in on a technicality). Gary Johnson doesn’t fulfill any contract kills in this film, but he might be the most convincing and most ruthless contract killer on this list.

43. Bruno Antony (Robert Walker), Strangers On a Train

42. The Jackal (Bruce Willis), The Jackal

41. Tommy DeVito (Joe Pesci), Goodfellas — Tommy arguably should be higher, but the only actual hits we can confirm for sure are poor Stacks Edwards and Morrie, neither of which is particularly poetic or moving because everyone in this movie is awful. It’s logical to conclude Tommy is responsible for some, if not most, of the Lufthansa Heist fallout montage, but we can’t count that in good conscience, because this is nothing if not a scientific exercise.

40. Salvo (Saleh Bakri), Salvo — Early in this Italian film, there’s an incredible scene shot from the victim’s perspective that plays like horror. It’s largely silent and without score, depicting what it’s like being stalked by a hitman. Never seen anything like it. Bakri is a menacing and terrifying presence throughout, but once again, a code costs, with a hitman undone by the hit he refuses.

39. Mrs. Smith (Angelina Jolie), Mr. & Mrs. Smith — We get to see two single, separate contract kills from Angelina and Brad in this referendum on the monotony of marriage, and Angelina’s is a classic honey pot. Not saying being hot and mining hotness and seduction isn’t a skill, it absolutely is, and Jolie pulls off a show-stopping leap off the side of a building to extract herself from this kill, but:

38. Mr. Smith (Brad Pitt), Mr. & Mrs. Smith — Brad Pitt gets the nod in this assassin two-hander solely because he racks up a slightly higher body count. We get a little poker, Pitt pretends to be a drunk jerk, he’s still rocking the slightly grown-in buzzcut from Fight Club, he does loving bro forehead bumps. It’s a good time, and then he kills everyone.

37. Julian Noble (Pierce Brosnan), The Matador

36. Joubert (Max von Sydow), Three Days of the Condor — In the gentleman assassin Le Carré mold. An amoral mercenary who kills to eat and sleeps just fine, equal parts charming and chilling.

35. The crew from Munich (Munich)

34. Bob Lee Swagger (Mark Wahlberg), Shooter — Wahlberg spends most of this film on an evasion and revenge mission, but in the beginning we get a shocking display of marksmanship. And we’re not supposed to take non-contract kills into account, but the whole film is an AND1 Mixtape for murder. He’s hitting dog food cans from a mile away, he’s clipping helicopter blades; it’s a trick-shot Olympics performance, and he’s doing it all with a ponytail. He’s Bob Lee Swagger!

33. Leonard (Guy Pearce), Memento — In a sense, Leonard is the greatest killer on this list. He’s a perfect killing machine who can be manipulated into killing whoever his handler needs killed, motivated by his tragic narrative and impaired by his lack of short-term memory. That last piece is obviously the rub — you could even argue Leonard doesn’t belong on this list because he’s not aware he’s killing for money. But he does, and has many times, as we’re led to believe.

32. Jackie Cogan (Brad Pitt), Killing Them Softly — Cogan is everything to this film: the contractor, the architect, HR, collective bargainer, project management, the skilled laborer. And I believe that’s largely the point. In a post-housing-crash American economy, you have to be entirely self-sufficient to accomplish anything, because you’re being fucked and let down by everyone on every side of the capitalist equation. In this effort, cleaning up an amateurish heist gone wrong, Pitt is the vertical integration.

31. Miguel Bain (Antonio Banderas), Assassins — I looked this up, and it turns out no one has ever had more fun making a movie than Banderas as the bad guy in this. There are many conflicted killers on this list. No conflict here. This guy really, really loves killing people!

30. Christian Wolff (Ben Affleck), The Accountant — A fascinating experiment: autism as a hitman superpower for a highly disciplined, double-exceptional killer. It refines an image that has become a trope unto itself: the meticulous assassin with a starched collar who mines a kind of functional OCD for their work.

29. Léon (Jean Reno), Léon The Professional — While Léon does most of his killing in defense of Natalie Portman, he also opens his titular film infiltrating the coke layer of a mob boss and his army of henchmen with a series of creative and electrifying kills. There is a bit of convenient cheating in this fantasy; the hitman gets to be a guardian angel/force for good throughout the film without his profession’s inherent moral gray. But when you kick this much ass, we’ll let it slide.

28. Mitchell Braddock (John Hurt), The Hit — Braddock is a bastard who kills nearly everyone he sees in the film, whether they’re his target, they mean him no harm, or they’re directly helping him, but he’s effective.

27. Kong/Joe (Pawalit Mongkolpisit/Nicolas Cage), Bangkok Dangerous — This 2008 remake feels like a semi-classic that’s been lost to time among the morass of forgettable action flicks Cage churned out in this weird period, all with nearly identical DVD covers. The 1999 Thai original is kinetic and inventive, a better film, but all in all, both are pretty great.

26. Wong Chi-Ming (Leon Lai), Fallen Angels — Wong Kar-wai’s fish-eyed and handheld gonzo existential “love story” between an unhinged hitman and his loopy personal assistant. The film is pervaded by dream logic, but you simply can’t deny Wong whips ass.

25. Martin Blank (John Cusack), Grosse Pointe Blank — The most creative hitman on this list, and a skilled one. This film really doesn’t get enough credit as a lean, nasty, predictive document. It’s a precursor to the late-’90s criminals-in-therapy trope that The Sopranos and Analyze This would capitalize on two years later, to greater acclaim.

24. Jules (Samuel L. Jackson), Pulp Fiction — Jules is essentially Vincent’s exact and perfect opposite. He is hyper-articulate and nimble on his feet where Vincent is plainspoken and slow-witted. He’s thoughtful and spiritual where Vincent is an animal drawn to sensual pleasure, motivated by instinct. Jules gets the message to make necessary changes and saves his own life; Vincent gets mowed down. But to speak directly to the exercise, it’s Jules that runs the show and calls the shots, Jules who decides when and who to shoot. He’s arguably the lasting image of the ’90s hitman in America. No small feat.

23. Rooster Cogburn (Jeff Bridges), True Grit — An underrated Coen Brothers classic that actually utilizes the humor of Charles Portis’ western novel, which was repackaged as a perfectly fine John Wayne vehicle upon release in 1969. Bridges is phenomenal, an ornery old fuck who reluctantly takes the job and reluctantly sees it through — a particularly terse and neurotic Western hitman bickering with his charge.

22. Heizo Sahara (Arata Furuta), 13 Assassins — Takashi Miike’s grotesque and brilliant remake is a film that wrestles with the meaning of duty: to your orders or to a higher morality, the good of the people, and the land. Within that conversation, this guy whips ass. As far as we can tell, he’s the only assassin working for money. Through the whole first act, it’s about gathering the crew that’s going to take out a psychopathic sadistic despot, and everyone is selfless and noble. And then we meet Sahara, this spear fighter, who lays out why he wants to get paid $200 for his life and what he’ll do with the money. A brief accounting: $120 to pay off his debt and break off a piece for his family. $30 for a tomb for his wife. $20 for his own burial, and the last $30 is for all the cool shit he never got to enjoy in life. (I’m guessing high end omakases, strip clubs, and blow.) Legend. This would definitely be my logic and my ask if I somehow ended up joining a crew of samurais hellbent on insurrection.

21. Lucien & Lenny (Jean-Louis Trintignant & Roy Scheider), The Outside Man — A great game of cat-and-mouse between two hitmen. I’m giving the edge to the legend Trintignant here, because he lives slightly longer and is a mean-as-hell French asshole.

Tier 1: Killer Elite

20. Charlie Storm (Lee Marvin), The Killers — Charlie is cool as hell as a hardened, seasoned silver fox near the end of his rope, trying to solve the mystery of a lucrative hit that was too easy. His search for an answer makes for one of the great hard-boiled crime neo-noirs.

19. Vito Corleone (Robert De Niro), The Godfather Part II — The top of this list is reserved for intimate kills, hitmen who had to look their marks in the eye and fire, because that’s what’s necessary to be truly great at the job. This is arguably a barter situation, with some financial incentives baked in between Vito, Clemenza, and Tessio, as Vito makes his bones stalking and killing Don Fanucci. What is inarguable is that, once again, Coppola delivers a classic. Unscrewing the light bulb, and its soft, warm light flickering as Fanucci screws it back in and taps it. De Niro waiting patiently with the towel wrapped around his arm for Fanucci to notice him as he enters his apartment then turns back toward Vito, who steps into his shot. The first bullet in the heart, the second in the cheek. The towel catching fire. The quick cut to the fireworks in the street. And finally, the old Sicilian message, a bullet in the corpse’s mouth. Kids, this is how you film an assassination.

18. Frank Sheeran (Robert De Niro), The Irishman — Scorsese’s bookend to his organized crime trilogy features Frank Sheeran, a real person who claims to have killed 25-30 people for the Bufalino crime family. The veracity of these claims is up for some debate, but the murder of Al Pacino as Jimmy Hoffa, Sheeran’s dear friend, may be the saddest onscreen kill the master ever committed to film.

17. Richard Kuklinski (Michael Shannon), The Iceman — Michael Shannon is a hypnotic, unsettling presence in any role he’s cast in, one of contemporary American cinema’s great “exploders.” He finds his greatest outlet for that here as a truly chilling, violent psychopath who has to kill to maintain his balance and sanity at home.

16. Ghost Dog (Forest Whitaker), Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai — The most intellectually attuned, moral, and spiritual killer on this list. Whitaker kills his way through the Columbus Day episode of The Sopranos, redistributing karma and justice. The opening Killa Priest needle drop is a fucking jam that establishes the film’s theme of dedication to code and a way of life as codes of honor and ethics fall away. Ghost also shoots a mobster through a bathroom sink drain in his crib, through his forehead. Sick.

15. Yuki (Meiko Kaji), Lady Snowblood — The great Meiko Kaji should be even higher than #15 on this list, as her impact goes far beyond this gorgeous film, with an indelible body of work as a ’60s and ’70s action star in Japanese cinema, as well as a major source of inspiration for Quentin Tarantino. The issue is that a majority of the kills in this — which is probably her best and most influential film — are revenge kills. But before her quest for vengeance begins, she works as an assassin, and the movie opens with a contract kill, with Yuki taking out a crew of gangsters.

14. Arthur Bishop (Charles Bronson/Jason Statham), The Mechanic — Bronson and Statham had to be here, but I wasn’t expecting them to finish this high. And yet, this might be either legend’s best film? Bronson’s original is cheap, and kind of looks and sounds like a capsule Boogie Nights parody porn shot by Paul Thomas Anderson as Jack Horner, but is brutal and effective exploitation. Its spirit is retained and even improved on in the remake. When Statham kills his handler (the late Donald Sutherland), his only friend and the tether to his humanity, it’s both tender and shocking in its sudden cold-bloodedness.

13. Michael Corleone (Al Pacino), The Godfather — There is simply no kill on this list that means more to the history of cinema than Michael fishing that pistol out from behind the old-school toilet in that Italian restaurant in the Bronx and popping McCluskey and Sollozzo, removing an immediate threat for Vito and starting a war between the five families. When you consider it’s Michael’s first act as a member of the family, and his first kills outside the theater of war, this is Magic winning the chip as a rookie.

12. Alejandro Gillick (Benicio del Toro), Sicario — Del Toro represents the efforts of a deep state, fighting the cartels by matching their lawless barbarity. He is an avenging angel of death who lost his family and eventually returns the tragedy. Fucked up, harrowing stuff.

11. The Jackal (Edward Fox), The Day of the Jackal — An unusual film and yet another template-setter. The Jackal is a man of disguise, fucking and killing his way towards his ultimate target, which is a spiritual and intellectual pursuit as much as it is a job.

10. Khamel (Stanley Tucci), The Pelican Brief — This may appear to be a high placement for a peripheral character in an early ’90s legal thriller featuring the two biggest stars on Earth at the time. But master of disguise Khamel kills TWO Supreme Court justices in rapid succession in one crazy night in DC, within the first 15 minutes of the film, in less than five minutes of screentime. One of the kills is in public, in a porn theater! Then he potentially kills drunk Sam Shepard with a car bomb. Efficiency is off the charts.

9. Caine (Donnie Yen), John Wick: Chapter 4 — There are many great assassins in this franchise, so let’s give a quick shout to an unusually fun Common performance, Ms. Perkins, and all the assorted characters we meet around The Continental, but Caine is clearly the best of them. There are many great set-pieces in this film, but the best action sequence of the 21st century is Donnie Yen’s true introduction as a blind assassin killing many men in a hotel kitchen. You could argue this performance belongs to the cartoon character tier, but there’s an athletic, human quality to his action choreography and his acting that elevates Caine to this God-level of cinematic hitmen. He’s drunk Gene Kelly, Jean Claude Van Damme, and a Harlem Globetrotter with a gun. It’s beautiful balletic savagery. The spatial intelligence of the scene is absolutely incredible. AND, his ultimate job is killing the unkillable John Wick to save his daughter, and he actually fucking does it* (for now)!

8. Nikita/“Josephine” (Anne Parillaud), La Femme Nikita — The first of Luc Besson’s beautiful, deadly women. It’s a film with a sneakily large tail that works as a John Wick predecessor, dropping us into the fully fleshed-out world of a covert network of international assassins. And Nikita is a badass, a punk turned natural killer, great up close or from a distance. But the film is also more evolved than the dense fantasies it would inspire, actually playing out the reality of its fantasy with people and emotional stakes, rather than fantastic comic book heroes — which is perhaps why it inspired a once popular, five-year cable series.

7. Angel Eyes (Lee Van Cleef), The Good, the Bad and the Ugly — I mean, how much do I need to explain here? The big bad who always completes a job he’s paid for in the perfect, maximalist, blown-out Spaghetti Western masterpiece. Van Cleef had several other roles that were up for consideration, but there was only one true option.

6. Vincent (Tom Cruise), Collateral — A nihilist sociopath who is enlisted to go on a killing spree and ultimately hits four of his five targets one crazy night in the sprawled out, disconnected hellscape of Los Angeles. Vincent is the complete package. He’s lethal with any weapon or hand-to-hand, intelligent, charming, completely immoral, all in a chiseled, alluring, silver fox package. Not even the unbridled power of Mark Ruffalo’s goatee can stop him.

5. Shuji Kamimura (Joe Shishido), A Colt Is My Passport — Whatever the impact of this movie has been, it’s not great enough. Feels like a Velvet Underground situation, where it may not have gotten the audience it deserved, but everyone who saw it went on to make or star in a movie with a hitman. A story that haunts me is that the star, Joe Shishido, was a young, blandly handsome actor who decided to augment his features in an attempt to get better parts. He got cheekbone implants, which gave him an unforgettable, distinct look (like a hot guy with the mumps). It worked: he went on to become a star. This is his masterpiece, an impossibly stylish hit gone wrong that builds to a classic crescendo in just 84 minutes. As soon as I wrap this blurb up I’m going to start working on my hitman screenplay.

4. Ogami Ittō (Tomisaburo Wakayama), Lone Wolf and Cub: Sword of Vengeance — Few films can claim to have sparked not just a great six-film series but an entire genre. That’s what Kenji Misumi accomplished with the first installment following the adventures of this groundbreaking character. The conceit of a cold-hearted killer in charge of a precious, adorable, vulnerable child is a formula so enticing it has stretched all the way to the Star Wars universe. But, gimmick aside, Ogami Ittō is a slippery, compelling hero and anti-hero with his own ideas of what constitutes honor and dignity. He keeps you guessing, and at times you want to root against him, but you can’t when faced with his son beaming up at him. A perfect formula.

3. William Munny (Clint Eastwood), Unforgiven — “Who’s the fella who owns this shithole?” If you’re still reading, you just got chills. Once again, I feel at a loss for the proper superlatives. It’s Eastwood. How many people has this guy killed on screen? But Munny is his lasting masterpiece, in the first paragraph of his obituary. Unforgiven is a film that doesn’t invent the neo-western, but perfects it, a Liberty Valance that fucks. A kind of coda that obviously doesn’t close the book on a genre that once defined American popcorn cinema, but is probably its final, lasting statement. Munny’s climatic massacre of Little Bill’s crew, when he embraces his nature, the killer he’s resisted the entire film, is so fucking great that no matter how many times the themes and beats of this film and this specific type of climactic bloodletting are replicated, they will never be improved upon.

2. Jef Costello (Alain Delon), Le Samouraï — Jean-Pierre Melville’s quiet, brooding classic is part procedural, part existential meditation. The hit that is the inciting incident of the film shows how much of a well-executed hit is about preparation. We see Jef nailing down his alibi and the timeline with his mistress, and it’s what initially saves him from the commissaire who knows better, but can’t prove it. Jef is a proto-Schrader protagonist, stoic and ascetic. He lives in a near-empty apartment, alone save for his caged bird. He dresses plainly and immaculately in a trench coat and teardrop fedora. He lives by a code, and at the end of the movie, after killing his master for setting him up and violating that code, he commits seppuku by cop, establishing a look, a vibe, a tragic arc, and an ethos for the hitman on film that has lasted almost 60 years.

1. Ah Jong (Chow Yun-fat), The Killer — John Woo’s masterpiece is still as electrifying today as it was 35 years ago. The Killer is a synthesis of and a gateway to hitmen films, and arguably all genre action films. It links the moody, low stakes, existential hitmen films coming out of France and New Hollywood in the ’70s with the cartoonish action and bloated body counts of Japanese gangster films and Spaghetti Westerns in the ’70s and American blockbusters in the ’80s. But it also portrays that action as intimate and graphic; you feel each kill. Woo brings gloomy atmosphere and outlandish sets, and yes, a thousand doves, and creates something new: a fully articulated aesthetic that can be found today as far afield as in the DNA of every major multi-billion dollar action franchise and stylized prestige genre films still trying to match his energy and vision.

But none of this works without Chow Yun-fat, Woo’s perfect, brooding, hot-and-cool protagonist who fills the frame and embodies his blend of hard-boiled, kitchen-sink action and emotional restraint. He delivers downbeat character work that doesn’t skimp on the smoldering pathos. Ah Jong, occasionally referred to as Jef, is a character in the tradition of the doomed loners who populate the moral universes of the old French and American hired-guns-in-suits flicks, with a hint of the superhuman badassery that made Joe Shishido and Tomisaburo Wakayama idols. It’s a potent, powerful recipe that has been replicated thousands of times, but can’t be killed.