Greatest villains of all time: Cyrus “The Virus” Grissom – Con Air

“The last guy who told me to have patience, I burned him down and bagged his ashes.”

Meet Cyrus "The Virus" Grissom.

People don’t often acknowledge this, but Con Air is one of the greatest films ever made. The dialogue might be cheesy “Make a move and the bunny gets it!” There might be massive plot holes, clichés, and an absolutely ridiculous amount of unresolved deaths and property damage, but these things don’t matter when you have a cast of characters as great as Con Air. Best of all these unhinged yet colourful characters is the central villain, Cyrus Grissom. Cyrus (played by the lovably hateable John Malkovich), is the absolute poster boy for what villains should be like. He is 39, and has spent 25 years of his life in prison. During that time he has killed 11 other inmates, escaped twice and started three riots. He also earned a Bachelor’s Degree, followed by a Doctorate in Law during his time spent incarcerated. It is definitely the mark of a special villain when you would love to see a separate film made up from their life up to their breakout moment. 

Definitely an iconic moment in villain development.

The situation in Con Air is also perfect for creating a great villain, because the criminals on board the hijacked plane are all just about as desperate as they can get. Cyrus is on his way to a new super prison, from which his chances of escaping once again are non-existent, so he will do anything in order to evade capture. When it looks like Cyrus’ plans have been foiled however, his malicious insanity reasserts itself, and his last words to the protagonist Cameron Poe are “Before I kill you, Poe. I just wanted you to know the last thing that little Casey Poe ever gets to smell will be *my* *stinking* *breath*”. This is a badass line, and Cyrus is full of them. 

So evil, but takes the time to chill with his henchmen.

*Spoilers*

An over the top villain such as Cyrus needs a fitting death scene, without which the finale would be a serious anti-climax. After Cyrus being built up to be more and more evil as the film goes on, culminating with the promise to kill Poe’s eight year old daughter, the film delivers big time with his death scene. Building up with a great fight aboard a speeding fire truck, Poe manages to stab Cyrus in the foot, pinning him to the extending ladder/scaffold thing that fire trucks have. Cyrus looks up to see an overpass/glass walkway coming up, and he proceeds to smash through it, in a way that would kill a normal man ten times over. Not to be killed so easily however, Cyrus falls on a batch of live electrical wires, receiving the shocking of a lifetime. This doesn’t kill him either, and if anything just wakes him back up. He is untangled from these wires and falls onto a conveyor belt that drags him over to his final punishment, a huge machine that seems to have been sitting there smashing down with great force onto nothing. Cyrus of course, gets his head crushed by this machine, and thus ends in my opinion the life of one of the best villains ever created. 

Everyone should see this film at least once. A year. For life.

Action films could take a lesson from Cyrus, and if I ever get around to writing a film, you better believe it will be chock full of subtly stolen character traits from this all round fantastic villain.