Is there a better display of cinematic cowardice?
Thursday, 13 Mar 2025
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Percy Wetmore from The Green Mile constantly comes in my head when thinking of cinematic cowardice
Beni Gabor from the Mummy
Paul Reiser as Carter Burke in Aliens
Brave Sir Robin
True Lies – Bill Paxton
“I’m nothing. I’m navel lint! I have to lie to women to get laid, and I don’t score much. I got a little dick, it’s pathetic!”
Paris in Troy
david from shaun of the dead.
Phoenix in Gladiator is up there to me.
The lawyer from Jurassic Park for sure.
Jerry from Fargo.
Burke, Carter Burke.
He works for the company, but don’t let that fool you he’s really an ‘OK’ guy.
Corporal Timothy Upham from Saving Private Ryan, standing on the staircase while a member of his squad is slowly stabbed to death. That scene was so cowardice and visceral that even him plugging that Nazi in the end couldn’t reconcile it.
Paris – Orlando Bloom in Troy
As meek as they come
The man that jumped in the life boat in titanic, one of the sailors looked at him in disgust
In interstellar Matt plays an excellent coward. Somebody ready to hate…. But its very understandable to me.
He gets sent on a solo mission to save mankind. Selflessly dives into the unknown looking for a habitable world. To give his species a future. Probably hoping for success and to be lauded a hero.
And then, his planet isn’t good enough…. so he gets abandoned. Unless he makes something up, the reward for his selfpercieved heroism will be a slow death by starvation. Alone on an alien planet, with nobody to talk to. Just a lonely, slow, and painfull death until oblivion comes. Nobody to bury him, nobody to remember him.
He did the very human thing. Attempt to save himself. Its an absolute dick move, and cowardly. But very understandable.
Lieutenant Norman Dike from Band of Brothers.
The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford .
Cypher from The Matrix
Upham in Saving Private Ryan is the biggest for me. I have seen that film dozens of times already, yet that particular scene with him doing nothing to prevent what came afterwards always has me shaking my head or screaming at the screen.
That said, Jeremy Davies did a spectacular job portraying him.
Cypher In The Matrix
Fredo In The Godfather
Dennis Nedry In Jurassic Park
Bill Paxton in True Lies
Saruman displays a very arrogant kind of cowardice in LOTR
Passengers
Ike Clanton (Tombstone)
Commodus (Gladiator)
Judas Iscariot (Passion of the Christ)
Fredo (Godfather 2)
Robert Ford (The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford)
Not a movie, although the film is a great answer too, but FARGO the show. Season one features, Lester Nygaard. Lester is the most cowardice character I have ever seen put in front of a camera, and it’s fantastic.
After all the build up, I have to say the Malfoys in the last Harry Potter movie.
Commodus in Gladiator. He couldn’t fight Maximus fairly so stabbed him in the heart before combat. And still lost like a whiny coward. Superbly played by Phoenix.
That’s Guy in
#Starship Troopers
Hiding in the Cuboard then gets his chopped off a minutes later
Percy fecking Wetmore.
Benny from *The Mummy*
The lady that tried to get of the bus in speed
The dad in Force Majeure (2014).
His cowardly reaction to danger is the uncomfortable basis of the whole film.
Still, he’s one of the only characters in the film whose motivations make sense and who doesn’t act like a futuristic alien space robot person, so I’ll let it go.
There isn’t. There can be nothing worse than betraying your whole species.
Harvey in Sunshine (communications officer).