We knew some of these would happen, but were we really ready for these scenes? Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we’re counting down our picks for the most harrowing politically or ideologically-motivated assassinations in movies, fictional or not. Spoiler alert!
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00:00 President Kennedy died at 1 p.m. Central Standard Time.
00:05 Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we're counting down our picks for the most harrowing politically or ideologically motivated assassinations in movies, fictional or not.
00:13 Spoiler alert.
00:14 The person you know as Malcolm X is no more.
00:17 Number 10. Mahatma Gandhi. Gandhi.
00:21 The object of this massive tribute died as he had always lived, a private man without wealth, without property, without official title or office.
00:34 Richard Attenborough's three-hour biopic about the famed Indian independence leader begins at the end of the story.
00:39 Its opening is a chilling and suspenseful sequence.
00:41 We follow a man, Hindu nationalist Nataram Ghatse, as he makes his way toward Gandhi's home.
00:46 You will be saying prayers in the garden. Just follow the others.
00:50 Even if we know how this is going to turn out, watching the man nervously make eye contact with his conspirators as he worms his way through the crowd is anxiety-inducing.
00:58 Because the audience largely knows about Gandhi's assassination, the decision to open the film with that scene catches us off guard.
01:03 Brother, Papu is already late for prayers.
01:06 His tragic end is never too far from our mind.
01:10 Number 9. Jimmy Hoffa. Hoffa.
01:12 Tell him I know it isn't me.
01:19 Tell him I'll meet him.
01:20 Where?
01:21 The roadhouse, two tomorrow.
01:25 The thing about Jimmy Hoffa is that, while we all know what happened, we don't actually know how it happened.
01:30 The Teamsters' leader, who ran afoul of the mafia, most likely met his end at their hands.
01:35 Martin Scorsese's The Irishman had its own theory.
01:38 Let's get out of here. Come on.
01:40 However, the 1992 movie about Hoffa presents an incredibly dramatic take on his murder, placing it in the parking lot of a diner.
01:46 Mr. Hoffa?
01:48 Yeah, that's right.
01:49 Played by Jack Nicholson, Hoffa is gunned down in slow motion as his bodyguard, played by Danny DeVito, watches in horror.
01:56 His face as he tries to rear up on his assassin is creepy in a way only Nicholson can manage.
02:00 The assassins get extra horrible style points for the James Bond-esque disposal of the body.
02:05 Number 8. Senator Carroll. The Parallax View.
02:08 How do you manage that? Always smiling.
02:09 Well, I'll tell you, we're very happy in every smiling faces, and I'm happy to be with my constituents today on such a wonderful day.
02:15 This paranoid political thriller was originally going to be based on the JFK assassination.
02:20 Instead, they went with a fictional figure whose death more resembled Robert Kennedy's.
02:24 The Parallax View opens with the assassination of a senator during a speech at Seattle's famous Space Needle.
02:29 Independence Day? Independence Day is very meaningful to me because sometimes I've been called too independent for my own good.
02:36 Though his assassin is dressed as a waiter, the police end up chasing the wrong one.
02:40 The spectacular sequence ends in true Hitchcockian fashion, with the presumed assassin fleeing to the top of the building and falling to his death,
02:46 while the real gunman goes free.
02:48 It's a thrilling scene that sets you up for the movie's various questions about who's really running things.
02:53 The committee wishes to emphasize that there is no evidence of any wider conspiracy. No evidence whatsoever.
03:02 Number 7. Walter Monk-McGinn, Gangs of New York.
03:05 Citizens of the Five Points, Mr. Bill Cutting is attempting to draw me into an argument that would no doubt end in bloodshed and the compromising of my office.
03:16 The streets of 19th century New York City are the battleground in the violent power struggle between clans of Catholics and Protestants.
03:23 As Bill the Butcher's enemies attempt to diminish his violent influence over the city,
03:26 the new sheriff, Monk-McGinn, challenges Bill not to fight but to settle their differences the democratic way.
03:31 The very notion of violent reprisal benumbs them.
03:37 Come on up. Let's see if you can resolve our grievances the democratic way.
03:42 But his name is Bill the Butcher, not Bill the Discusser. McGinn soon eats his words and builds club.
03:47 He's murdered right in front of dozens of witnesses.
03:49 True to form, Daniel Day-Lewis rings the moment for all it's worth.
03:52 It's the minority vote. Now you're tasting my mutton.
03:58 How do you like it, huh? Number six, Commissioner Loeb and Judge Cirilla, the Dark Knight.
04:02 Get them both into protective custody. Where's the commissioner? City Hall. Seal the building.
04:06 No one in or out till I get there. Got it. District Attorney Harvey Dent openly wages war on the mob.
04:11 However, the Joker is the one who comes calling. In this unforgettable sequence, his evil plot against Gotham City begins.
04:17 The target are several of the city's leading criminal justice figures, including Dent, Police Commissioner Loeb and Judge Cirilla.
04:22 He memorably saves the mayor, Anthony Garcia, for later. Sorry, sir.
04:26 We believe the Joker's made a threat against your life. These are dangerous people, Judge.
04:30 Yeah, but you're not giving me an awful lot of information. Even we don't know where you're going.
04:33 As the chaos unfurls between three separate locations, the movie crosscuts, building the tension to a fever pitch.
04:39 Clues as to what's about to happen come too quick to truly put together.
04:43 Even as Judge Cirilla's car goes up in flames and Commissioner Loeb is dying from his poison glass,
04:47 you barely have time to prepare for the next hit.
04:55 You've come for him. We made it.
04:59 Number five, Adolf Hitler in Glorious Bastards.
05:01 I have a message for Germany. That you are all going to die.
05:10 Schloss! Aus!
05:12 This alternate history war epic by Quentin Tarantino ditches the historical record for a more satisfyingly violent end to a monster's life.
05:20 Two separate revenge plans against Hitler and his commanders converge at a cinema in 1944 Paris.
05:25 Because of the whole historical angle, audiences were probably expecting the dictator to escape the trap at the end.
05:30 Ooh, that's a bingo.
05:36 Is that the way you say it? That's a bingo?
05:38 That would not be a bingo. As a fast-burning nitrate film fire ravages the cinema,
05:42 the titular American commandos open fire on Hitler, Joseph Goebbels, and the theater full of Nazis.
05:47 It's an almost operatic level of violence, given that it's, well, Hitler. It's a thrilling scene of retribution.
05:52 Are you mad? What have you done?
05:56 Number four, John F. Kennedy, JFK.
05:58 You have to conclude that there was a fourth shot and a second rifleman.
06:04 And if there was a second rifleman, then by definition, there had to be a conspiracy.
06:10 The events of November 22, 1963 have been dissected over and over again.
06:15 Images from it are part of American cultural memory.
06:18 Movies like Jackie have tried to demystify it by putting us right in the center of the action.
06:22 Oliver Stone's paranoid conspiracy movie makes us relive the tragedy of that day as experienced by the people who weren't there.
06:28 Then it hones in on the moment Kennedy died through the use of the real-life video footage of the assassination.
06:33 They wait. They wait until he gets to the killings on between three rifles. Kennedy makes the final turn from here.
06:40 Kevin Costner's district attorney forces us to really look at the footage, and look again, and then again, and keep looking until we understand his point.
06:47 The movie won an Oscar for its editing. It's not hard to see why.
06:50 So what really happened that day? Let's just for a moment speculate, shall we?
06:55 Number three, Harvey Milk, Milk.
06:57 If Dan shows up, just avoid him. We don't need a scene today, do we, Harvey?
07:03 God forbid, Diane.
07:05 In 1977, the gay rights activist and first openly gay man elected to public office in America, Harvey Milk, was gunned down in his office by a political rival, Dan White.
07:15 Milk's assassination, along with that of Mayor George Musconi, are dramatized to shattering effect in Gus Van Sant's 2008 biopic, Milk.
07:22 Now look, take some time off, spend it with your family.
07:27 Van Sant's camera doesn't shy away from showing us the reality of that moment.
07:34 For as romantic and idealistic as Harvey Milk is shown to be, his death plays out with shocking clarity.
07:39 No.
07:43 Only in his last moments, as he looks out at the opera house that he loved so much, are gentle, and then White delivers his last bullet.
07:50 Number two, Malcolm X, Malcolm X.
07:52 Malcolm.
07:54 What's wrong?
07:58 Like many of the entries on this list, Spike Lee's biopic has to make the gravity of a historical event feel like it's happening again.
08:04 But even knowing how Malcolm X's life ended can't prepare you for the horrifying sight of the charismatic leader being gunned down in front of his wife and children.
08:11 As-salamu alaykum.
08:12 Alaykum as-salam.
08:13 Get your hand out of my pocket!
08:15 The scene descends into chaos.
08:17 One gunman is even chased down by a mob.
08:20 Meanwhile, we're left with his wife, Betty Shabazz, played by Angela Bassett, as she cradles Malcolm's head.
08:24 It's an overwhelming climax making the historical reality into something that feels urgent and tragic.
08:29 The assassination of Malcolm X was an unfortunate tragedy.
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08:49 Number 1. Senator and Eleanor Islin, Manchurian candidate.
08:54 It's up under the roof on the 8th Avenue side of the garden.
08:57 It will have absolutely clear, protected shooting.
09:01 Long before she was the plucky amateur detective in Murder, She Wrote, Angela Lansbury was a movie star who plays the diabolical Eleanor Islin in this 1962 thriller about brainwashed POWs.
09:12 She's a senator's wife who's hired an assassin to take out her husband's political enemy.
09:16 You are to hit him right at the point that he finishes the phrase, "Nor would I ask of any fellow American in defense of his freedom that which I would not gladly give myself."
09:29 Little did she know they'd send her own son for the job.
09:32 This doesn't deter her one bit.
09:34 However, in the movie's climax at Madison Square Garden, her son turns his gun on her and her husband instead.
09:39 It's one of the greatest and most shocking endings of all time.
09:41 You couldn't have stopped them. The army couldn't have stopped them. So I had to.
09:45 What movie assassination stayed with you after you saw it? Let us know in the comments.
09:48 Made to commit acts too unspeakable to be cited here.
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10:01 [music]