30 Manliest Movies

Reservoir Dogs (1992)

The Movie: Six colour-coded criminals, their employer, his son, and a kidnapped cop. All men.

Ratio of Men To Women: Ironically, it's a woman who gives Tim Roth's Mr Orange his slow-dying stomach wound. But he blasts her straight away.

Manliest Moment: Mexican stand-off. Especially Mr White's (Harvey Keitel) unflappable appraisal of the situation: "If you shoot this man, you die next."

The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948)

The Movie: Three gringos - Humphrey Bogart, Tim Holt and gnarly old-timer Walter Huston - risk bandit territory to prospect for gold in Mexico.

Ratio of Men To Women: This is no country for womenfolk. To be honest, it's no country for menfolk, unless you're blinded with greed like Bogart's Fred C. Dobbs.

Manliest Moment: Cheating, double-crossing Dobbs is no advertisement for male virtue, and Holt's young'un is wet behind the ears, so by default Huston's "shut up and get on with it" attitude wins this prize.

The Departed (2006)

The Movie: Out-manning Raging Bull and Goodfellas as Scorsese's most macho movie, this wins on quantity: Damon, DiCaprio, Nicholson, Sheen, Wahlberg and Baldwin.

Ratio of Men To Women: Vera Farmiga stands out as Damon and DiCaprio's conflicted lover, but bear in mind the Hong Kong original, Infernal Affairs , hired two actresses to play separate love interests.

Manliest Moment: The ice-cold elevator shoot-out.

Kelly's Heroes (1970)

The Movie: War-weary Clint Eastwood assembles a bunch of no-good-niks to abandon the Nazi fight in favour of tracking down some stolen gold.

Ratio of Men To Women: Kelly, it should be stressed, is a bloke. His "heroes" are Telly Savalas, Donald Sutherland and Don Rickles.

Manliest Moment: Eastwood, Sutherland and Savalas stare down a tank.

Bloodsport (1988)

The Movie: Frank Dux (aka Jean-Claude Van Damme) heads to Hong Kong to participate in a no-holds-barred martial arts tourno.

Ratio of Men To Women: Ladies would only get in the way of the fighting.

Manliest Moment: Van Damme wins his final fight Jedi-style, despite being blinded with quicklime.

The Thing (1982)

The Movie: An Antarctic research station falls under siege by a terrifying shape-shifting alien.

Ratio of Men To Women: Not a single lady: the damn Thing doesn't even pretend to be one. All that's left is an impressive array of beards.

Manliest Moment: Admirable calm under pressure, as Palmer's reaction to see a head sprout spider's legs and scuttle off is to wisecrack, "You've got to be fucking kidding."

Platoon (1986)

The Movie: Oliver Stone's autobiographical 'Nam epic sees Charlie Sheen goes loco with drugs and guns. No comment.

Ratio of Men To Women: The ladies are traitorous gooks all to a Marine's eyes. And despite Willem Dafoe's stoned sage, most of the grunts take their cue from mentalist Tom Berenger.

Manliest Moment: Dafoe finds time to throw a poster-image death pose amidst napalm explosions.

The Wages of Fear (1953)

The Movie: Four desperate, penniless men take on the suicidal job of driving trucks of nitroglycirne across a Central American jungle.

Ratio of Men To Women: No room for ladies on the trip; the actresses disappear at the halfway mark and don't come back.

Manliest Moment: A test of nerve (for the audiences as much as the characters), as Yves Montand navigates the truck over a rotten platform hanging over a cliff.

Spartacus (1960)

The Movie: Stanley Kubrick's swords-and-sandals epic about a slave uprising by Spartacus (Kirk Douglas) against crooked Roman senator Crassus (Lawrence Olivier).

Ratio of Men To Women: Jean Simmons is third-billed under Douglas and Olivier, but look at the heavyweights below: Tony Curtis, Charles Laughton and scene-hogging, Oscar-winning Peter Ustinov.

Manliest Moment: There's no 'i' in team. These guys are all Spartacus.

Mad Max 2 (1981)

The Movie: Ex-cop Max (Mel Gibson) roams the post-apocalyptic desert looking for petrol, but the race is on with vicious biker tribes.

Ratio of Men To Women: In this landscape, even the women are Amazonian-style warriors.

Manliest Moment: The climactic Apunkalypse chase of petrolhead violence.

The Great Escape (1963)

The Movie: A prison camp of British Toms, Dicks and Harrys (plus a brace of token Yanks) scatter across Europe to annoy the Nazis.

Ratio of Men To Women: Men - McQueen, Garner, Attenborough, Pleasance, Bronson, Coburn, etc. Women - none .

Manliest Moment: McQueen's daring, if failed, attempt to jump a barbed wire fence by motorcycle.

Heat (1995)

The Movie: Actually directed by a Mann (Michael), this is the city as playground for crims De Niro, Kilmer and Sizemore, and cop nemesis Pacino.

Ratio of Men To Women: The ladies in their lives (including Ashley Judd and Natalie Portman as Pacino's daughter) get plenty of attention, but over three hours they are dwarfed by the men's cat-and-mouse.

Manliest Moment: Kilmer reloads under pressure during the pivotal L.A. street gun-battle - an example so textbook it's reportedly taught to troops.

Rocky IV (1985)

The Movie: Balboa's ultimate test, as he has to take on Dolph Lundgren's Ivan Drago (and, by extension, the entire Soviet Union) to avenge the death of Apollo Creed.

Ratio of Men To Women: Both of the fighters have wives, but the scales are tipped because Drago's (played by Brigitte Nielsen) has overdosed on the steroids.

Manliest Moment: Stallone's tree-chopping, mountain-climbing masterpiece of a training montage.

Deliverance (1972)

The Movie: The daddy of survivalist horror, as four city boys go on a canoeing trip that goes awry when the local hillbillies decide they're fair game.

Ratio of Men To Women: So few ladies that the local men aren't fussy about where they get their sexual thrills, which is bad news for Ned Beatty.

Manliest Moment: Burt Reynolds rescues Jon Voight from a similar fate by shooting the yokel with a bow-and-arrow.

The Delta Force (1986)

The Movie: U.S. Special Ops team, led by Lee Marvin and Chuck Norris, are sent in to rescue a hijacked Israeli plane. No sweat.

Ratio of Men To Women: All the of women hostages are released... which is the Delta Force's cue to kick some ass.

Manliest Moment: Chuck rides his motorcycle through a safe-house window to unleash hell on Robert Forster's terrorist leader.

Point Break (1991)

The Movie: What's better than being a bank robber? Being a Zen surfer-dude bank robber. Even cop Johnny Utah (Keanu Reeves) is jealous of Bodhi's (Patrick Swayze) thrill-seeking lifestyle.

Ratio of Men To Women: Not even Lori Petty can turn Keanu's head away from stalking Bodhi. Ironically, this is the only movie in this list directed by a woman: Kathryn Bigelow.

Manliest Moment: As anybody who's seen Hot Fuzz will attest, the foot chase/gun firing into air scene is the definition of homo-erotic machismo.

Die Hard (1988)

The Movie: Bruce Willis as John McClane takes on a skyscraper full of heavily armed robbers, without even wearing shoes.

Ratio of Men To Women: With Mrs McClane (nee Gennaro) a hostage, it's up to McClane alone to see off the all-male badguys.

Manliest Moment: McClane grapples with Alexander Godunov's psycho Karl and strangles him with a metal chain.

Conan The Barbarian (1982)

The Movie: Schwarzenegger's breakthrough - stripped, oiled and rippling as Conan, he changed action-hero acting into a matter of muscles.

Ratio of Men To Women: Conan falls in love with foxy thief Valeria, but she isn't hard enough to make the credits.

Manliest Moment: Beheading cult leader Thulsa Doom (James Earl Jones) with a broken sword.

The Godfather (1972)

The Movie: Marlon Brando spreads his seed; cunning Al Pacino and hot-headed James Caan have mixed fortunes running the family business.

Ratio of Men To Women: This is really a heartwarming family saga... in which the women are sidelined or blown up because their husbands and fathers happen to be gangsters.

C'mon fellas, we thought the Mafia was an equal opportunities employer.

Manliest Moment: Pacino mans up in an Italian restaurant and blows out the brains of rival mobster Sollozzo and his crooked police escort Captain McCluskey.

Aliens (1986)

The Movie: A belligerent fighting force of Space Marines are sent to a terraforming colony to deal with an infestation of xenomorphs.

Ratio of Men To Women: Be honest, when you first saw this you did a double-take on seeing Jeanette Goldstein's butch Vasquez. However, no such mistaking Sigourney's Ripley or Carrie Henn's Newt: a more formidable duo than the fellas.

Which is why Aliens hasn't made the top 10.

Manliest Moment: Oh well, when the men can't get the job done... here's Ripley. "Get away from her, you bitch!"

Gladiator (2000)

The Movie: Russell Crowe's Maximus swears vengeance after effete sadist Commodus (Joaquin Phoenix) steals the Emperorship.

Ratio of Men To Women: Not even Connie Nielsen can turn Maximus' head after his wife has been murdered. It's all about payback.

Manliest Moment: Even better than fighting tigers, is Crowe's death stare as he promises he will have his vengeance, "in this life or the next."

Seven Samurai (1954)

The Movie: A village under siege; seven men paid only in rice to protect it. Gets the nod over The Magnificent Seven because fighting with swords is harder than shooting guns.

Ratio of Men To Women: None amongst the Seven or their bandit foes. Of the villagers, one beauty gets in the way of the youngest Samurai's work, but there's an old crone who's deadly with a scythe.

Manliest Moment: The Seven's leader (Takashi Shimura) ventures into a shack where a rapist is holding his victim hostage, and emerges victorious seconds later.

Rambo: First Blood Part 2 (1985)

The Movie: John Rambo (Sylvester Stallone) is sent back into Vietnam, officially to rescue American POWs. Really, he's there to win the war a decade after everybody assumed it had been lost.

Ratio of Men To Women: Julia Nickson provides local love interest, but she gets lost amidst Rambo's 69 kills - 10 more than his official wartime record.

Manliest Moment: Shooting a Commie soldier with an explosive arrow.

The Wild Bunch (1969)

The Movie: Veteran outlaws find themselves hunted down in a strange new world where honour doesn't mean a thing. So they start to play dirty.

Ratio of Men To Women: A handful of nameless ladies (of the night), versus a gathering of Hollywood's most weather-beaten male faces: William Holden, Ernest Borgnine, Robert Ryan and Warren Oates.

Manliest Moment: The Bunch decide to avenge fallen comrade Angel despite knowing it means certain death for all of them.

Enter The Dragon (1973)

The Movie: Undercover fighter Bruce Lee participates in a martial arts contest on an island run by gangsters - including a young Jackie Chan. Which is pretty manly, really.

Ratio of Men To Women: Plenty of women being used as playthings on the island, but when it comes to the fights, it's men only.

Manliest Moment: Bruce Lee's fight against O'Hara (Bob Wall), which ended in real-life with Wall suffering a broken sternum from a Brucey bonus and two extras - who tried to catch Wall - getting broken arms.

The Expendables (2010)

The Movie: A crack team of mercenaries single-handedly revive the 80s action movie: Stallone, Stath, Li, Rourke and Lundgren.

Ratio of Men To Women: Stallone gets a love interest, and Charisma Carpenter rocks up as the Stath's lady, but otherwise this is testostorene central, down to henchmen (Stone Cold Steve Austin) and cameos (Arnie and Bruce).

Let's hope they draft in Cynthia Rothrock for the sequel.

Manliest Moment: Ross and Lee living the action-movie dream by seeing off hordes of anonymous goons using a classic back-to-back fighting stance.

Predator (1987)

The Movie: An elite team of soldiers (led by Arnie Schwarzenegger, and including Carl "Apollo Creed" Weathers and wrestler Jesse Ventura) slaughters a village of guerillas but meets its match in an invisible alien who stalks human prey for fun.

Ratio of Men To Women: Local Anna survives the team's initial assault. It's probably just as well for her, though, that Ventura's Blain dies early, given that he's a "goddamn sexual tyrannosaurus."

Manliest Moment: Native American tracker Billy sacrifices himself to buy time for Arnie to rescue an injured comrade.

300 (2006)

The Movie: Zack Snyder's digitally buffed-up dust-'em-up, as 300 Spartans take on the entire Persian army, elephants 'n' monsters 'n' all.

Ratio of Men To Women: Hundreds of fellas (led by Gerard Butler, Michael Fassbender and Dominic West). Just one lady of note, but Lena Headey's Queen Gorgo can out-tough most of the hunks.

Manliest Moment: "Tonight we dine in Hell!" Nonsense, sure, but made to be shouted out in a lusty roar of bravado.

Fight Club (1999)

The Movie: David Fincher's unflinching satire about how today's emasculated menfolk need to restore their mojo by beating the shit out of each other...and, if that doesn't work, why not try blowing up skyscrapers?

Ratio of Men To Women: Ignoring Helena Bonham-Carter's wasted Marla, the most telling detail here is that Fincher has to hire Meatloaf and his man-tits to reduce the overall level of testosterone.

Manliest Moment: Any of the titular secret organisation's brutal bouts, although it's Jared Leto's face being turned to dough that stands out.

The Dirty Dozen (1967)

The Movie: The ultimate men-on-a-mission movie, simply because these men - criminals and malcontents all - don't give a fuck whether they live or die.

Ratio of Men To Women: For starters, there's the Dozen themselves, including perennial hardmen Charles Bronson, Telly Savalas, Jim Brown and John Cassavetes. Oh, and Donald Sutherland.

But the rest of the movie's men - Lee Marvin, Robert Ryan, George Kennedy and Ernest Borgnine - would be enough to make this a contender.

With this lot, there's simply no room for women.

Manliest Moment: The entire last act is one big Nazi kill-spree, although for stone coldness, nothing tops dropping a fistful of grenades and gasoline into a cellar full of bad guys.