75. Quint
Jaws
A local shark hunter, Quint joins Icthiologist Matt Hooper and Amity Police Chief Martin Brody in trailing and killing a shark running amok in the water surrounding peaceful Amity Island (you know that any place that is described as "peaceful" in a film is going to get fucked up).
Being a salty sea dog, Quint could have easily have gone the way of other crusty film sailors before him and stayed a one-note stereotype, but Robert Shaw's performance gives him such great depth. A life of dealing with some of the most dangerous creatures in the ocean has left him obviously scarred, hiding his constantly foreboding fear with a proud display of insane overconfidence.
Many of his best scenes, from the one with his scars to his story about being onboard the USS Indianapolis reveal a frail man with more layers than he would like to let on. Quint, no matter how much of a badass he would like to come off as, is nothing more than what he doesn't want to be: vulnerable. He is no more than a human like the rest of us.
Defining moment: Brace yourself as I post the entire Indianapolis story, one of my favorite scenes in any movie. Have fun with this huge ass block of text, everyone. I hope you can feel the gravity that Quint gives it.
Japanese submarine slammed two torpedoes into our side, Chief. We was comin' back from the island of Tinian to Leyte. We'd just delivered the bomb. The Hiroshima bomb. Eleven hundred men went into the water. Vessel went down in 12 minutes. Didn't see the first shark for about a half-hour. Tiger. 13-footer. You know how you know that in the water, Chief? You can tell by lookin' from the dorsal to the tail. What we didn't know, was that our bomb mission was so secret, no distress signal had been sent. They didn't even list us overdue for a week. Very first light, Chief, sharks come cruisin', so we formed ourselves into tight groups. It was sorta like you see in the calendars, you know the infantry squares in the old calendars like the Battle of Waterloo and the idea was the shark come to the nearest man, that man he starts poundin' and hollerin' and sometimes that shark he go away... but sometimes he wouldn't go away. Sometimes that shark looks right into ya. Right into your eyes. And the thing about a shark is he's got lifeless eyes. Black eyes. Like a doll's eyes. When he comes at ya, he doesn't even seem to be livin'... until he bites ya, and those black eyes roll over white and then... ah then you hear that terrible high-pitched screamin'. The ocean turns red, and despite all your poundin' and your hollerin' those sharks come in and... they rip you to pieces. You know by the end of that first dawn, lost a hundred men. I don't know how many sharks, maybe a thousand. I do know how many men, they averaged six an hour. Thursday mornin', Chief, I bumped into a friend of mine, Herbie Robinson from Cleveland. Baseball player. Boatswain's mate. I thought he was asleep. I reached over to wake him up. He bobbed up, down in the water, he was like a kinda top. Upended. Well, he'd been bitten in half below the waist. At noon on the fifth day, a Lockheed Ventura swung in low and he spotted us, a young pilot, lot younger than Mr. Hooper here, anyway he spotted us and a few hours later a big ol' fat PBY come down and started to pick us up. You know that was the time I was most frightened. Waitin' for my turn. I'll never put on a lifejacket again. So, eleven hundred men went into the water. 316 men come out, the sharks took the rest, June the 29th, 1945. Anyway, we delivered the bomb.
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