Search results
People also ask
What is a 'one man army'?
What is another word for one man army?
What if one man becomes the Army?
What happens when the one-man army is intentionally sent out?
This trope caters to everyone's inner Munchkin; 99% of First Person Shooters ever made fall under this. Often goes hand-in-hand with It's Up to You and Walking Armory. When the One-Man Army is intentionally sent out to take care of the problem by himself, it's a case of One Riot, One Ranger. Compare and contrast Person of Mass Destruction, who ...
- Mikhail Panikakha. In World War II, the Battle of Stalingrad looked very much like it was a battle the Germans couldn't possibly lose. The Russians were pushed back to the banks of the Volga, and divisions that were supposed to be 12,000 men strong were down to mere hundreds or even dozens.
- Fazal Din. Advertisement. Fazal Din was a Punjabi Muslim fighting for the British in Burma during World War II. In March 1945, Din was commanding a section of about a dozen men in an attack on some Japanese machine gun bunkers when he and his men were held up by enemy fire.
- Herbert Christian. In June 1944, Private Herbert F. Christian was on a patrol in Central Italy with 12 other men when they were ambushed by a force of about 60 enemy soldiers rolling deep with three tanks at a range of only 30 yards.
- Dominic "Fats" McCarthy. Advertisement. Dominic "Fats" (seriously) McCarthy was an Australian soldier who fought in Gallipoli and France from the beginning of World War I. In August 1918, McCarthy was commanding a company in Northern France when the battalion on his left flank was held up by a heavily fortified German trench full of machine guns.
- Harry, Kingsman: The Secret Service
- Xander Cage, XXX
- Anton Chigurh, No Country For Old Men
- Chris Vaughn, Walking Tall
- Alejandro Gillick, Sicario
- Casey Ryback, Under Seige
- Leon, Leon: The Professional
- Ethan Hunt, Mission: Impossible Series
- Ellen Ripley, Alien
- Bob Lee Swagger, Shooter
Harry is Colin Firth’s character in Kingsman: The Secret Service, a movie about a member of a clandestine agency (a member who is incidentally not Harry), who must foil Samuel Jackson’s plot to eliminate the majority of earth’s population. The movie capably spoofs the spy genre, but is still an impressive action film in its own right. Harry (and al...
For laughs, here’s the premise of xXx, a problematically named film that feels like it could only have been made in 2002 (apparently not): Xander Cage is an extreme-sports thrill-seeker and stuntman, who hosts also hosts an underground web talk show. It’s like an early day video podcast. Xander decides to steal a politician’s car and drive it off a...
Anton Chigurh, Javier Bardem’s strangely coiffed hitman from No Country for Old Men, is the only pure antagonist on this list. Framed as a remorseless force of nature in the film, Chigurh employees a number of gimmicks that satisfy the “cool” requirement. His coin flip routine, which decides the life or death of prospective victims, heightens the p...
Chris Vaughn follows in the footsteps of a great one-man-army archetype (including the protagonist of the original Walking Tall from 1973): the guy cleaning up the town. Vaughn, played by Dwayne "The Rock" Johnsonin the early days of his film stardom, is a returning special forces soldier who finds his hometown substantially worse than when he left...
It’s possible that if we knew more about or saw more of Benicio Del Toro’s character in Sicario, he would rank substantially higher on this list. What we do know that is that Gillickwas a lawyer working in Juarez – his wife and daughter were brutally murdered by Fausto Alarcon, the fictional head of the fictional cartel depicted in the film. Subseq...
A huge component of the one man army trope is that the character is often not what they seem, and underestimated by their antagonist. They are almost always ex-special forces, or at least military, but trying to find a peaceful existence until they must reluctantly use their deadly skill set to combat a new threat. You’ll see this over and over aga...
What we love most about Leon is his motivation: his eventual care for protégé and daughter figure Mathilda (Natalie Portman), who slowly wears down Leon’s uncaring exterior and – in his words – gives him a “taste for life.” Leon is a small-time mafia hitman who becomes embroiled in a war with a crooked DEA agent after reluctantly taking Mathilda in...
To try to quell any angry comments right now, let’s get this out of the way – the primary knock on Ethan Hunt is that he is not truly a one man army. In fact, at the conception of the character he was not an army at all. Mission: Impossiblewas basically an intimate espionage thriller. It's more of a slow burn. The four sequels are increasingly broa...
Ellen Ripley’s inclusion on this list is predicated on you agreeing that one (or more) Xenomorph in an enclosed space is probably more terrifying and dangerous than numerous killers in a combat situation. Ripley is a warrant officer, which lets audiences know that she can at least handle herself in physical situations. It’s her heroism in the Alien...
Shooter was undoubtedly released twenty years past its time. Instead of being viewed as a classic relic from a time when action movies were at the very forefront of film culture, it is most likely viewed as an eminently watchable homage to '80s heroes, and a pretty good Mark Wahlberg film. Shooteris an example of the wrongfully-accused trope, anoth...
- Michael Haigis
- one-man army.
- army of one.
- heavily armed combatant.
- heavily armed fighter.
- John McClane — 'Die Hard' Franchise. Die Hard spawned an entire sub-genre of the everyman trapped in a confined setting, systematically taking out minions one by one.
- Harry Hart / Galahad — Kingsman: The Secret Service. Colin Firth makes a surprisingly good action star, and Kingsman makes for an excellent spy thriller parody.
- Hit-Girl — Kick-Ass. In a spoof of comics and superhero movies, with several tongue-in-cheek references, Kick-Ass manages to be both badass and starkly sincere in its best moments.
- Bryan Mills — 'Taken' Franchise. Liam Neeson has a very particular set of skills, and he’s unafraid to use them throughout the Taken franchise. Playing an ex-CIA agent, Mills spends the first film tracking down his kidnapped daughter and the people holding her captive as part of an underground trafficking ring.
Played by: Harrison Ford. Films: Raiders Of The Lost Ark (1981), The Temple Of Doom (1984), The Last Crusade (1989), The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull (2008) He’s possibly the least well-prepared ...
one-man army. army of one. heavily armed combatant. heavily armed fighter. heavily armed soldier. legion of one. rambo. team of one. well-trained combatant. well-trained fighter. well-trained soldier. big guy. brave man. champion. chevalier. conquering hero. conqueror. fighter. fighting man. fighting woman. great man. hero. implacability. knight.
