The 10 greatest marksmen in cinema history
Society has a complex relationship with guns—both drawn to and repelled by them. This duality may explain why cinema history is filled with depictions of guns and the marksmen and women who wield them.
That peculiar fascination with guns remains deeply ingrained, so filmmakers naturally translate it to the screen. Consider how many films are watched in any given year and how many of them include guns or weapons of some kind. It’s likely a significant percentage.
In cinema, the fascination with people who excel at their craft will always endure. Whether it’s watching a lawyer command a courtroom or a surgeon save a life on the operating table, there is an undeniable draw to such mastery.
It’s no surprise that there is a similar intrigue surrounding experts with weapons. Sharpshooters, gunslingers, and crackshots all capture the imagination. Here are the top ten greatest marksmen in cinema history.
10 greatest marksmen in cinema history:
10. The Hunger Games (Gary Ross, 2012)
Starting the list with a markswoman—one who doesn’t use guns, no less—is Jennifer Lawrence’s Katniss Everdeen, the heroine of the Hunger Games film series. An expert archer, her skill is brilliantly showcased in Catching Fire, where she fires off arrows in rapid succession at a series of holograms during her training session.
Fascinatingly, Lawrence had precisely zero bow and arrow training before she started playing Katniss. She went on a crash course with Olympic archer Khatuna Lorig, who told The Daily Beast, “She was very determined. When she started practising, we had her on a 15 or 20-pound bow, which is pretty heavy for a beginner. She did a pretty good job at first, but she did get a little bit hurt by smacking her bow arm with the string. Sometimes, if you stand incorrectly, this happens…so she got smacked and got a big bruise that she was very proud of!”
9. The Outlaw Josey Wales (Clint Eastwood, 1976)
No list of great cinematic marksmen would be complete without Clint Eastwood. His portrayal of the six-shooter-wielding man of vengeance in the 1976 western The Outlaw Josey Wales stands out as one of his best performances. The film features some incredible shootouts, particularly the ranch battle, showcasing ’70s action filmmaking at its most brutal and visceral.
Interestingly, Eastwood actually saw the film as an anti-war statement and a commentary on the sheer volume of weapons which are created to feed the war machine. In 2022, he told The Wall Street Journal: “I saw the parallels to the modern day at that time. Everybody gets tired of it, but it never ends. A war is a horrible thing, but it’s also a unifier of countries. Man becomes his most creative during war. Look at the amount of weaponry that was made in four short years of World War II…That’s kind of a sad statement on mankind”.
8. John Wick (Chad Stahelski, 2014)
Could any discussion of the greatest marksmen in cinema history be complete without mentioning the Baba Yaga himself, John Wick? Modern cinema’s most popular perpetrator of mass murder on a mind-boggling scale, Keanu Reeves‘ assassin, cut a path of destruction across four films from 2014 to 2023. While the character was mostly known in-universe for his ability to kill with something as simple as a pencil, it was his aptitude with firearms which led to the biggest portion of his body count.
Consider this: in the first movie, Wick kills 73 people with guns. His weapons of choice range from handguns to machine guns to sniper rifles, and the man rarely misses. In Chapter 2, Wick adds another 110 victims with guns, and Chapter 3 sees 124 fall to one of his many, many bullets. Thankfully, Wick decided to tone things down slightly for Chapter 4 – seeing fit to only end the lives of 105 sentient beings with his guns.
7. True Grit (The Coen brothers, 2010)
Technically, the best marksman in Joel and Ethan Coen’s True Grit is Matt Damon’s Texas Ranger LaBoeuf, who makes the nearly impossible 400-yard shot at the film’s climax to take out Barry Pepper’s villainous Ned Pepper. However, his sanctimonious attitude makes it hard to give him that honour. Instead, Jeff Bridges’ Rooster Cogburn deserves the recognition—a drunken, tough-as-nails character who can shoot bad guys off their horses while charging at them full speed on his own. And he’s not one to take kindly to anyone questioning his marksmanship.
You see, in one of the best scenes in the movie, LaBoeuf has the temerity to suggest that Cogburn missed a shot and inadvertently struck him. Cogburn protests that he can “hit a gnat’s eye at 90 yards” – before missing a glass bottle three times and blaming cheap shells. Never fear, though, this is merely a temporary miscalibration because he then hurls a piece of cornbread high into the sky and hits it with unerring accuracy. Then LaBoeuf misses the two bits of cornbread Cogburn throws afterwards.
6. Saving Private Ryan (Steven Spielberg, 1998)
While Barry Pepper may have met his end in True Grit thanks to LaBoeuf’s sniper rifle, in Saving Private Ryan, he was the expert marksman. In Steven Spielberg’s World War II epic, Pepper played Private Daniel Jackson, a left-handed sharpshooter who could hit a target from 450 yards away with his trusty M1903A4 Springfield Rifle. In fact, at one point in the film, he can fire a shot through the scope of an enemy German’s rifle and straight into his eye. It’s pretty incredible.
Jackson – a devout Christian who often quotes Bible verses throughout the film – claims that, if given the chance, he could end the war with just one of his patented shots. When asked to explain himself, he states, “Well, what I mean by that, sir, is if you was to put me and this here sniper rifle anywhere – up to and including one mile of Adolf Hitler with a clear line of sight, sir – pack your bags, fellas. War’s over. Amen.” It’s hard not to believe him.
5. Tombstone (George P Cosmatos, 1993)
“I’m your Huckleberry.”
Val Kilmer’s portrayal of legendary gunslinger Doc Holliday in George P Cosmatos’ Tombstone is nothing short of a revelation. He’s quietly hilarious while never letting the audience think he’s a joke. He’s suffering from tuberculosis throughout the film, yet you still believe he could hold his own in any gun battle. He’s a dying man, yet he does more living in the movie than most other characters. He’s extremely loyal, yet is no Boy Scout. In fact, if you cross Doc, you’ll likely wind up with a hole in your head.
In I’m Your Huckleberry: A Memoir, Kilmer revealed how he viewed the character. He wrote: “His tongue is more lethal than his pistol. Throughout the drama, he’s dying of both drink and tuberculosis. In playing him, I thought of what my dear friend the great screenplay writer Robert Towne had taught me: all insightful dialogue comes out of situations, not pre-developed thought. In that regard, I saw Doc’s situation as dire. I also saw his action as defiance in the face of death. I loved him.”
4. Lethal Weapon (Richard Donner, 1987)
“I do it real good, you know.”
“Do what?”
“When I was 19, I did a guy in Laos from 1,000 yards out. It was a rifle shot in high wind. Maybe eight or even ten guys in the world could have made that shot. It’s the only thing I was ever good at. Well, see ya tomorrow.”
This exchange perfectly encapsulates the character of Martin Riggs, everyone’s favourite maverick cop with a death wish and a glorious feathered mullet. It speaks to his tortured soul, for one thing. This is a man who truly believes the only thing he ever had a talent for in life is taking other people’s lives. It speaks to his time in Vietnam, which shaped him as a person. Above all else, though, it speaks to how different Riggs is from most people – he can casually tell his new partner that he’s an expert death machine, then quickly conclude with a chirpy, “Well, see ya tomorrow”.
3. Dirty Harry (Don Siegel, 1971)
This entry might seem like it will spotlight Clint Eastwood’s iconic cop, Harry Callahan, one of cinema’s quintessential “shoot first, ask questions later” lawmen. However, the focus here is on Scorpio, the serial killer sniper Callahan hunts in Don Siegel’s classic 1971 film. The film opens with Scorpio taking out a woman swimming in a rooftop pool with his rifle, followed by him targeting a small child. It’s a genuinely harrowing start to the movie, leaving a lasting impact on the audience.
Speaking of which, actor Andrew Robinson’s performance as Scorpio was so memorably unhinged that it made it hard for him to be cast in other roles. He once told Rue Morgue: “I was really proud of the performance. What I didn’t realize was, it scared a lot of people. And scared people to the point where people weren’t interested in hiring me. I didn’t work for a year.”
He wound up leaving acting for five years before coming back on the scene when people could finally see him as an actor again, and not the character.
2. Wanted (Timur Bekmambetov, 2008)
In Timur Bekmambetov’s Wanted, James McAvoy’s regular schlub Wesley Gibson finds out he’s actually the son of a member of The Fraternity, an ancient collective of assassins. Oh, and the panic attacks he’s been suffering are actually the beginnings of his manifesting superpowers, which will, among other things, enable him to curve bullets around targets. As you do.
Easily the coolest marksman in the movie is Fox, played with characteristic grace and danger by Angelina Jolie. She’s the member of the Fraternity who first explains everything to Wesley and then trains him to master his abilities. When she finds out that her boss, Mr Sloan, has been manipulating their organisation’s code to kill targets purely for profit, though, she’s the one who does the noble thing. In this case, the noble thing is firing a curved bullet with “goodbye” written on it through the heads of every assassin in the room, rescuing Wesley in the process.
1. Léon: The Professional (Luc Besson, 1994)
This entry bends the rules slightly, as both Jean Reno’s titular assassin and Natalie Portman’s Mathilda deserve recognition. Léon is remarkable during the siege of his apartment, eliminating numerous enemies while wielding guns in both hands, even hanging upside down from the ceiling. However, the scenes where he teaches Mathilda how to handle various weapons, including a sniper rifle, are what give the movie its unique and unsettling power.
Speaking of which, Portman’s parents were actually not too fond of how the movie put such a young girl in violent and potentially sexually charged environments. After she read the script, she revealed, “My parents were like, ‘There is no way you’re doing this movie. This is absolutely inappropriate for a child your age. And I was like, ‘This is the greatest thing I’ve ever read! You’re gonna ruin my life!'”
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