10 Great Movie Speeches

I love great movie writing. And there are some lines, some speeches, that I never get tired of watching. If I stumble across that movie on TV, I'll stick around just to watch that one scene. Here are some movie speeches that are classics in at least my mind. These are all longer than some of the best-known classics, like "I'll be back" or "Rosebud."

Blues Brothers. Elwood's classic line, "It's 106 miles to Chicago, we've got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, it's dark, and we're wearing sunglasses."

A Few Good Men. Lots of great writing here, with the legendary line, "You can't handle the truth." But my favorite line comes from Demi Moore's character. When asked why she's defending these two Marines, she says, "Because they stand on a wall, and they say ‘nothing is going to hurt you tonight, not on my watch'.' It seems terribly bland, just reading it. But the context and Moore's delivery (you hear in her voice an insecure little girl needing protection) make it great.

Gladiator. I loved the early line, "At my signal, unleash hell." But the for-the-ages speech comes from Maximus (Russell Crowe) when he removes his helmet and tells his foe Commodus, with gradually building intensity, "My name is Maximus Decimus Meridius, commander of the Armies of the North, General of the Felix Legions, loyal servant to the true emperor, Marcus Aurelius. Father to a murdered son, husband to a murdered wife. And I will have my vengeance, in this life or the next."

Dirty Harry. You know the speech, maybe by heart. Clint Eastwood, as Harry Callahan, after a shootout, stands over a robber and says, "I know what you're thinking. 'Did he fire six shots or only five?' Well, to tell you the truth, in all this excitement I kind of lost track myself. But being as this is a .44 Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world, and would blow your head clean off, you've got to ask yourself a question: Do I feel lucky? Well, do ya, punk?"

Blade Runner. After a nasty fight, the replicant Roy Batty (Rutger Hauer) sits over the defeated Harrison Ford and then, in a total break from the action, delivers this wistful soliloquy: "I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die." It captivates me every time.

Return of the King. Aragorn, at the gates of Mordor, tells the outnumbered troops, "Hold your ground, hold your ground. Sons of Gondor, of Rohan, my brothers. I see in your eyes the same fear that would take the heart of me. A day may come when the courage of men fails, when we forsake our friends and break all bonds of fellowship, but it is not this day. An hour of woes and shattered shields, when the age of men comes crashing down, but it is not this day. This day we fight! By all that you hold dear on this good Earth, I bid you stand, Men of the West!"

You've Got Mail. I love the whole apartment scene, when Joe Fox (Tom Hanks) visits Kathleen Kelly (Meg Ryan). There are several good dialogue choices here. I'll pick the one where Fox tells Kelly that running her bookstore out of business wasn't personal. She tells him: "What is that supposed to mean? I am so sick of that. All that means is that it wasn't personal to you. But it was personal to me. It's personal to a lot of people. And what's so wrong with being personal, anyway?...Whatever else anything is, it ought to begin by being personal."

Unforgiven. Clint Eastwood, as William Munny, shoots a saloon owner, and when told that he just killed an unarmed man, explains, "He should have armed himself if he's gonna decorate his saloon with my friend."

Shawshank Redemption. After Andy plays an Italian opera over the prison loudspeaker, Red offers this narration: "I have no idea to this day what those two Italian ladies were singing about. Truth is, I don't want to know. Some things are best left unsaid. I'd like to think they were singing about something so beautiful, it can't be expressed in words, and makes your heart ache because of it. I tell you, those voices soared higher and farther than anybody in a gray place dares to dream. It was like some beautiful bird flapped into our drab little cage and made those walls dissolve away, and for the briefest of moments, every last man in Shawshank felt free."

Silence of the Lambs. And finally, Hannibal Lecter tells Jodie Foster's character, "A census taker once tried to test me. I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice cianti."

Posted on October 18, 2006 10:59 AM|

Comments

Now I'm gonna have to go back and watch You've Got Mail for the 3000th time. Good list.

Posted by: Erinn | October 19, 2006 08:33 AM

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