Top 10 Best Characterizations in Film (10-6)

There are many things that make a great character - the direction, the actor, the performance, but most importantly - the characterization.  This is due to the creativity of the writer and their feeling of how this person should be made.  Many are characterized perfect to a T, and this is what this list is all about.  So fasten your seatbelts - it's going to be a bumpy night, and if you disagree, then frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn.

Honorable mentions to:

• Rick Blaine - Casablanca
• R.P. McMurphy - One Flew Over the Cukoo's Nest
• George Bailey - It's a Wonderful Life

10. Andy Dufresne - the Shawshank Redemption

Throughout this inspiring story adapted from Stephen King, Frank Darabont does a phenomenal job of identifying the intelligent, modest, and kindhearted person that Andy Dufresne is.  Tim Robbins, too, does a great job of showing his dark emotions very well - also shocking that he didn't receive any Oscar or Globes attention - and making it easy to sympathize with him.  He is easily a character that is one to love, told through his emotions and the breakthrough performance of his prison inmate and soon best friend Red (Morgan Freeman).

9. Howard Beale - Network

Never has a film about television been more fascinating, and how could it not with the help of top-notch writing of Paddy Chayefsky?  Peter Finch's portrayal of Howard Beale made him seen incredibly realistic as it lets the viewer choose whether to hate him or sympathize for him.  He's just an old man trying to be successful through television and soon becomes a hit with a spin-off of his own show later on.  His anger is what makes this performance so terrific and helps characterize him very well.  We can all guarantee on one thing - he'll always be mad as hell.

8. Norman Bates - Psycho

From Robert Bloche's novel to the big screen, Bates has always been the most unpredictable character in the history of cinema.  Is he just an innocent soul wandering, or is he a time bomb just waiting to blow?  It is never sure what he is until the end, and Hitch does a perfect job of showing what a confused, interesting person he is.  His personality is so unique - taxidermy, his obsession with his mother - make him one of the best characterized in film history.

7. Vincent Vega & Jules Winnfield - Pulp Fiction

There is nothing else to say other than, I love these guys.  They're so rich in terms of personality and it is exemplified through their small-talk, primarily in the first scene they share, as they go to whack somebody.  It is shown how great of friends they are through their conversations about pork, foot-massages, and pilots on television.  The two are hysterical as they react so differently to the same situations as each twist happens.  Both John Travolta and Samuel Jackson were very deserving of their Oscar nominations, and are still memorable to this day, through Quentin Tarantino's brilliant screen-writing

6. President Merkin Muffley - Dr. Strangelove

Both portrayed ingeniously by Peter Sellers, he is one of the most well-developed characters in the history of film (like I haven't said that enough).  Maybe it's the fact that Muffley's played by an actor who doesn't have an american accent, or that he has great chemistry in the war room with everyone else.  Stanley Kubrick did tremendously on the script to make him hilarious, but this time, it's more of the improvisation that Sellers does to make him characterized so hilariously.  He is shown to have such a great personality when he is on the phone talking to Russian president named Dmitri.  You can understand how Dmitri feels through how great Sellers does, and you never hear the man.  This is a character so creative, he's makes the silent come to life.