Longtime Dakkanaut
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1. Ranuccio
Caravaggio (1986)
Notable for being a) the first time Sean Bean meets his maker on film and b) a whole lotta nakedness, this meandering biopic of artist Michelangelo Merisi (as opposed to, y'know, the Ninja Turtle) sees Bean play a prize fighter-cum-artist’s model who arouses the passion of his patron but who is in turn in love with the dirty-faced Lena (Tilda Swinton). A twisted triangle ensues, and eventually simple-minded Ranuccio gets his throat sliced open for his impudence. Also starring Dexter Fletcher (oh, hello, Spike from Press Gang!) as the young Caravaggio, this movie is stylized, anachronistic, frustratingly silent for long passages of time and bizarrely foot fetishistic… and is probably even less fun than all of that makes it sound.
2. German Soldier
War Requiem (1989)
Another movie with director Derek Jarman (of Caravaggio renown… or not), and another onscreen death for Bean as his character, known simply as German Soldier, is killed when he is shot in the hand and then has a bayonet run through his body. Then there’s a truly incomprehensible bit at the end where… maybe he’s in Heaven? But a really depressing Heaven? Yeah, this is one wacked out film. Indeed, it’s pretty much a silent movie, with all the “action” set to the rousing strains of composer Benjamin Britten’s 1962 music exploring, well, war. There is a whole lot of miming, and the only dialogue is provided by the occasional poem recitation and a choir harmonizing indeterminately. Don’t be fooled into thinking that Bean must have been merely an extra in this film, with a character name like “German Soldier”. After all, in this, his last performance, Sir Laurence Olivier’s character rejoiced under the sobriquet “Old Soldier”. Meanwhile, this movie is fatiguing and dull; not remotely recommended.
3. Tadgh McCabe
The Field (1990)
This Irish family drama centers on farmers determined to keep their land, no matter what the cost. Bean plays the dutiful son of the clan, and meets his end when -- and this is true -- he falls over a cliff whilst running from a herd of stampeding cows. It’s just so The Lion King, and emphatically not funny. Even though it sounds like it probably should be.
4. Carver Doone
Lorna Doone (1990)
In R. D. Blackmore’s classic, beloved 1869 tale of costumed melodrama, pretty young Lorna Doone is in danger of a forced marriage to her cousin, the willful, wild and witless Carver. She is in love with another man -- the simple but stalwart John Ridd, who hates the dastardly Doones with some heat. (They killed his father. Prepare to die.) It is soon discovered that she is not a Doone at all, however; having been kidnapped by those brigands as a baby, she is revealed to be heiress to a vast fortune, and consequently she and Ridd are parted. Through various political maneuverings and a bunch of lurid plot devicing, Lorna is eventually reunited with her love; meanwhile, the tyrannical Doones have finally pissed off their neighbors royally and are all of them put to the metaphorical sword. Carter survives to shoot Lorna on her wedding day, and is punished for this egregious act by drowning in a mire. A mire! (Lorna lives, by the way. Huzzah!)
The movie’s just like that… except it kind of sucks. Bean’s commitment to Carver’s sociopathic bluster is this lackluster film’s only saving grace; so much so that one could almost wish that Lorna would choose him over the whey-faced Clive Owen-as-Ridd, and that he would emerge victorious from her two suitors’ inevitable confrontation. But… no.
5. Gabriel Lewis
Screen One, “Tell Me That You Love Me”, 03.02 (1991)
It’s a story told in a hundred Lifetime movies. Woman meets handsome, charismatic, tender man and she falls under his spell. But before long he becomes unreasonably jealous of her attention, starts to accuse her of heinous disloyalty, and the dream turns into a nightmare as she becomes the focus of his hypnotic, psychotic obsession. Bean’s Gabriel is just such a man, but with one notable difference. When, at the last, his inamorata Laura has been freed from his control, it is not because he has been taken permanently out of the picture by her new boyfriend, a protective police officer or through the kind offices of America’s lax gun control laws. No, Gabriel stabs himself rather than live without his "other half". It’s quite sweet, really.
6. Robert Lovelace
Clarissa (1991)
This sumptuous three-part costume drama, based on the 18th-century Samuel Richardson novel, is utterly captivating. Bean plays Robert Lovelace, a privileged, charming and spoilt man about town who sets his wicked sights on the virtuous and steadfast young beauty, Clarissa (Saskia Wickham). She is initially attracted (as are we all), but slowly he reveals himself to be an utter cad, rakehell and scoundrel. He rapes the poor dear child, and is finally called to account for his nefariousness by his best-friend Jack (Sean Pertwee), and he is then stabbed with a rapier in a duel over the lady’s honor. A fitting end.
7. Sean Miller
Patriot Games (1992)
Armed Irish Repbulican militants are at the heart of this taut political thriller, and Sean Bean is at the heart of them. Miller has been haunted by tragedy and has turned to vengeance against the English to soothe his wounded poet’s soul; unfortunately for him, superspy Jack Ryan (Harrison Ford, in a typically excellent performance) foils his Royal assassination plan, killing Sean’s brother in the process, and pretty soon the two are facing off mano-a-mano to the death… which, of course, comes to Miller, courtesy of Ryan. He get’s beaten, impaled on a boat anchor, and then blown up. Talk about adding insult to injury!
8. Lord Fenton
Scarlett (1994)
For many, the sequel to Margaret Mitchell’s much revered Gone With the Wind was the answer to a lifelong prayer. To others, it was as unnecessary as Teen Wolf 2. (For those who just want to cut to the chase: yes, Scarlett and Rhett do end up together.) In the much-watched mini-series made of Alexandra Ripley’s 900-page fanfic, our heroine was played by Joanna Whalley (who’s just never done anything to compare to Willow), our hero by Timothy Dalton, and Sean Bean turned in a suave yet sinister performance as the dastardly and calculating Lord Fenton, a -- not to put too fine a point on it -- rapist (again?) who is stabbed to death by one of his victims. (In the book, there was way less rape. Also, Fenton didn’t die and Scarlett wasn’t put on trial for the crime. Hollywood is wacky like that.)
9. Alec Trevelyan
GoldenEye (1995)
Trevelyan is one of those sympathetic bad guys at which Sean Bean so excels: raised in England after the death of his parents at the age of six, he is in fact of Eastern European descent, and his family -- denied entry into the Empire at the conclusion of World War II due to their collaboration with the Nazis -- were killed on the orders of Stalin. Don’t you hate when that happens? Despite being best buds with Bond, James Bond (Pierce Brosnan), Trevelyan plots his revenge on the nation he holds responsible, betraying his MI6 foster family and going into business as an arms dealer with delusions of world-domination-y grandeur. Of course, his evil schemes must be thwarted, and after some tense moments the scarred, still unrepentant Trevelyan meets his fate crushed to death underneath the burning, mangled weight of the… er… big-ass antenna he’d been hoping to make his own.
Best. Bond villain. Ever.
10. Dave Toombs
Airborne (1998)
Not to be confused with the 1993 teen skateboarding flick starring Seth Green and Jack Black (which is truly awful and yet is a way, way better film), Airborne is an action movie starring Steve Guttenberg. Yes, you read that correctly. He heads up a special ops squad tasked with retrieving a generic bioagent from some thieves mid-air. Naturally enough, Bean plays our villain, a black-clad arms dealer with a crisp British accent and crazy eyes who gets the only even vaguely decent lines and ends up shot in the chest. But, hey, at least it wasn't by, of all embarrassing ways to go out, Guttenberg. This may very well be the funniest movie you will ever see.
11. Jason Locke
Essex Boys (2000)
True Crime meets crime noir as this ripped-from-the-headlines tale casts Bean as merciless drug kingpin Locke, whose various double-dealings and thoughtless cruelties come back to bite him in the… well, everywhere, as he and two rivals/associates are gunned down while waiting patiently in a Range Rover, expecting to make a big score. Notable as much for Alex Kingston’s knockout turn as Locke’s Machiavellian, foulmouthed wife as for Bean’s full-frontal assault of a performance, Essex Boys is never a fun movie to watch, but is definitely one you won’t soon forget.
12. Boromir
The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring (2001)
Even if one hadn’t read The Lord of the Rings books and knew ahead of time that charming but corrupted Boromir was not long for this world, by 2001 Sean Bean had already established such a fine tradition of spectacular anti-hero death that his demise-by-orc was almost a given. The direction of this movie was such that when those orcs came racing towards Boromir, and he stood heroically fending them off in order to cover Pippin and Merry’s retreat, one couldn’t help but hope he would, against all the odds, make it. Alas, he was shot full of arrows. (Or, perhaps, happily he was shot full of arrows, considering the fervor of Tolkien purists.)
Continued...
13. Patrick Koster
Don't Say a Word (2001)
This is one of those thrillers that you think you know how it’s going to play out, but you totally don’t. All the performances are stellar, especially that of Brittany Murphy as a disturbed young girl possessed of a ten million-dollar secret: the location of a jewel stolen by her father and his avaricious colleagues. A gang led, of course, by Bean. Having repressed her ten year old memories of seeing her father murdered in front of her, Murphy’s Elisabeth is resident in a sanatorium. Child psychologist Dr. Nathan Conrad (Michael Douglas) is called in to help with her case, and his daughter is taken hostage against his success at getting Elisabeth to reveal the whereabouts of the jewel. There is a whole lot of yelling, and running, and chasing, and a cool lady cop (Jennifer Esposito) in the mix, and in a satisfying denouement, ruthless killer Patrick Koster is buried alive, still seeking his ill-gotten gains. Did not see that one coming at all.
14. Cleric Errol Partridge
Equilibrium (2002)
In a society in which emotion is a sin (‘cause it leads to anger and anger leads to the Dark Side, you know the drill), art, literature and anything else that might evoke strong passion has been banned, and is to be burnt. This soul-crushing act is carried out by the Grammaton Clerics, an austere and disciplined body who search out “sense offenders” without mercy and have one of the coolest-looking -- if, in reality, probably least effective -- martial arts: the Gun Kata. Bean plays one such Cleric, but one that has seen the error of his totalitarian society’s ways. After developing a crush on Emily Watson (which, not surprising, is it?), it is only a short step to Yeats, and it is while reading from this poet’s greatest hits that Partridge is brought to justice when shot by his law-abiding partner, played by a stone-faced Christian Bale – who then begins to question all he’s ever believed. Of course. Equilibrium is nothing so much as an amalgam of Fahrenheit 451, Brave New World, The Penultimate Truth, 1984 and Logan’s Run, among others, but it is no less awesome for all that, and Bean is simply riveting in what is essentially a cameo role.
15. Robert Aske
Henry VIII (2003)
Among an enormous cast of distinguished British greatness, Bean nevertheless stands out in this sensationalized, serialized biopic of England’s most infamous monarch (infamous if only because he puts that “I’m Henry the Eighth, I Am” song into people’s heads, and it will not go away). He plays one Robert Aske: in reality, a lawyer of respectable Yorkshire origins who protested against the religious reforms brought about by schism from Rome. Here, he is portrayed as a rabble-rousing former army captain with a vendetta against his King, and who almost deserves his gruesome traitor’s death: hung by chains. One could protest, but among the other needless historical inaccuracies in this extravagant mini-series, Aske’s treatment is the least of our concerns.
16. Dr. Bernard Merrick
The Island (2005)
In this unsuccessful clones-are-people-too parable, Bean plays a soulless head scientist who is basically a genetic slaver. Wealthy people pay him to raise and keep their clones in stasis against the need for a new liver or replacement arm; instead, he has them conscious but kept in a state of childlike innocence; it’s like the proto-Dollhouse, but not nearly as interesting. Of course, this status quo, while profitable, cannot be maintained for long, or we wouldn’t have much of a movie, and Lincoln Six Echo (Ewan McGregor), a most unusually curious clone, escapes from the company’s clutches with Scarlett Johanssen in tow (nice work if you can get it), and the pair later return to liberate all of the other clones. At which time Bean’s bean counter Merrick, who is almost incidental to the plot -- sure, he orders a few deaths and such, but for our movie’s nominal villain, he really is massively inconspicuous -- gets in a tussle with Lincoln that ends with him hung by a cable after having been shot through the neck by a grappling hook. If only the rest of the movie had been that creative.
17. Loki
Far North (2007)
This film comes replete with one of the most touching, and yet devastating, romances on Sean Bean’s resume. Spectacularly shot in the Arctic tundra, it tells a tragic tale of love, loss and jealousy as Saiva (Michelle Yeoh), outcast from her tribe when pronounced evil by their shaman, first saves the lives of Anja (Michelle Krusiec) and Bean’s Loki, but then ends up destroying them rather than allowing them to leave her -- Loki dies by her design, not only frozen, but naked with it. Intense, glorious, terribly beautiful and profoundly upsetting, this one will either leave you in impotent fury, in floods of tears, or utterly baffled. And will then haunt you for days to come.
18. Danny Bryant
Outlaw (2007)
In a crime-ridden facsimile of modern London in which police corruption is rampant and senseless violence is a widespread occurrence, paratrooper Danny Bryant returns from war only to find himself cuckolded. His subsequent move to a hotel introduces him to one Simon Hillier (Sean Harris), through whom he soon meets some other likeminded souls who are fed up with the status quo. They form a vigilante posse, dubbed the Outlaws, and Bryant, now their leader, proceeds to go flying rodent gak crazy. He dies stupidly, in a firefight with armored police, shot multiple times while believing himself to be a martyr and a hero, rather than a common thug. Man, this film is exhausting.
19. John Ryder
The Hitcher (2007)
Is it wrong to be rooting for a serial killer? Of course it is. Especially one that is as indiscriminate and beyond all reason as Ryder, the titular hitcher of the film whose dark motivations are murky at best and who adds torture and attempted rape to his other disturbing activities. (Enough with the rapey characters, Sean Bean. Enough!) For all his brutal murdering of nice families from the suburbs, though, perhaps Ryder’s biggest offence here is in his severing of the very special romantic bond between this movie’s quite adorable main couple, Jim (Zachary Knighton) and Grace (Sophia Bush). And yet… there’s something compelling about Ryder. Attractive, even. And, yes, of course we all cheer when Grace, having endured hell at the hands of this man, at last shoots him dead -- and just when he thought he’d gotten away with it, too. But also there is a kind of lingering melancholy at deranged Ryder’s abrupt comeuppance. Such is the power of Bean.
20. John Dawson
Red Riding: The Year of Our Lord, 1973 (2008)
In this adaptation of the David Pearce novel Nineteen Seventy-Three, set in 1970’s Yorkshire, Bean plays a corrupt land developer and possible deranged serial killer, torturer and rapist (seriously: again?) who is being investigated by intrepid journalist Eddie Dunford (Andrew Garfield), and is very fond of turtlenecks. Dawson is, in the end, shot by Eddie in retaliation for the murder of his new lady love, Paula (Rebecca Hall), and then Eddie deliberately drives his car into oncoming traffic. This is one depressing affair.
21. Pyke Kubic
Ca$h (2010)
A pre-Thor Chris Hemsworth plays here Sam, who can’t believe his luck when he happens upon a suitcase full of money: half a million dollars worth. The money had originally been stolen by the now-jailed, improbably named, Reese Kubic, and when his twin brother Pyke tracks down Sam and his wife to find that some of the cache is missing, he forces them to turn bandit in order to repay the thousands they had spent. Eventually, Sam has had enough of being controlled, Pyke gets shot, and his body disposed of in a handy car compactor. In other news, Reese (also played by Bean, of course), does survive to the end of the movie. Huh.
22. Markus Kane
Death Race 2 (2010)
In this prequel to the 2009 Jason Statham vehicle (forgive the pun) Death Race, itself a remake of the earlier 1975 version that made criminals-in-rally-cars such a tour de force, Bean plays a ruthless mob boss who callously puts a bounty on the head of potential hostile witness and death racer extraordinaire Luke, AKA Frankenstein (Luke Goss). He is punished for his sins when he takes a shot in the chest from a skinny Triad kid and then falls artistically back into his swimming pool.
Hey, that’s what you get for trying to have a member of 80’s British pop sensation Bros killed.
23. Ulrich
Black Death (2010)
In this Medieval meditation on the nature of religion, love and epidemiology, Bean plays Ulrich, an aggressively devout soldier of the Lord who is dispatched to investigate suspected necromancy in a village that is mysteriously, possibly sinisterly, free of the virulent titular disease. Half-way through, it all goes a bit Wicker Man, and Ulrich is actually quartered (y’know, pulled apart while roped to horses galloping in opposite directions) while also suffering from the Bubonic Plague. Overkill much? (This movie, meanwhile, has a deeply depressing and unsatisfying conclusion. It’s really true: no one ever expects the Spanish Inquisition.)
24. Major Jack Jones
Age of Heroes (2011)
Does Jones die? Live? Who knows? This World War II Ian Fleming biopic/commando movie about a British infiltration into Nazi-occupied Europe to spy on… well… science, sees Bean as an expectant father, a respected soldier, and the head of the elite black ops unit tasked with the job. Moments before the end of the movie, Jones is engaged in a furious firefight with superior enemy forces, yelling at his fellow commandos to leave him to cover their retreat while they head for Stockholm, promising to meet them there. While it would be nice to believe that he, in fact, does, the historical record on which this film is based would seem to indicate that he does not. Also, dude. It’s Sean Bean. Of course Jones died.
25. Lord Eddard Stark
Game of Thrones, “Baelor”, 01.09 (2011)
Ned Stark is unforgivably stupid in A Game of Thrones, and the faithful HBO adaptation of George R. R. Martin’s book did not gift him with even one iota more common sense. Ignoring Arya’s (admittedly muddled) warning of a conspiracy against him, warning the duplicitous Queen Cersei that he knew of her children’s illegitimacy, and trusting the goodwill of his wife’s sleazy spurned lover are only a few of his failings. The fact that he then confesses to treason in order to spare his simpering daughter Sansa’s life, only to have his own ended when he is summarily beheaded by a swift sword to the neck, is just part and parcel of the idiocy that ever was Ned.
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