Owen Davian In Mission: Impossible III
It takes quite a bit of skill to steal a Tom Cruise movie out from under Tom Cruise, but Philip Seymour Hoffman damn near made you root for the villain when he took up the role of Owen Davian in J.J. Abrams’ Mission: Impossible III. Although Davian was pursuing a MacGuffin of unexplained scope and significance called the Rabbit’s Foot, what was crystal clear was that he was willing to do anything, and kill anyone to get it. Spy movie bad guys are usually tuned in a way that’s ludicrous and over the top, but Hoffman played up the menace and the ruthlessness to create a cold and calculating power broker that gives Cruise’s Ethan Hunt a real run for his money.
So what makes Owen Davian stand out amongst bad guys? Well, as another famous villain once said, he’s a man of his word. Upon being captured by the IMF, Davian threatens to get back at Ethan by killing the woman he loves, his fiancée Julia, right in front of him, and later he does exactly that.
Granted, it was a decoy wearing one of those face mask deals, but the effect was just as real, and it certainly shook Ethan in a way no other baddie in the previous two Mission: Impossible movie had. You have to admire a character that can tear down the perfectly chiselled exterior of Tom Cruise, and make him sweat. You also have to admire a character that can be hung out of a plane mid-flight and keep his cool and even manage to come back with a threat of his own. Considering that Michael Nyqvist’s villain Hendricks barely makes a blip in Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol, Hoffman’s Davian still stands as the franchise’s best bad guy.