Villainous Breakdown: Film

"I can't help myself! I have no control over this, this evil thing inside of me, the fire, the voices, the torment!"

"That was an order! Steiner's assault was an order! Who do you think you are, to dare to disobey an order that I give?! Is this what it has come to!? The military has been lying to me! Everybody has been lying to me! Even the SS! Our generals are just a bunch of contemptible, disloyal cowards!"

  • The Shawshank Redemption has warden Samuel Norton freaking out over Andy being missing from his prison cell. His rant doubles as Fridge Brilliance on the movie's part, as Norton's clearly projecting his corrupt nature onto everyone else. This is a special case, because what the villain's freaking out over happens BEFORE he gets exposed as a crook, (and is somewhat mild in comparison) and likely before he has any reason to expect that to even happen.
  • In the A-Team movie, Lynch has one when he overhears that The A-Team and General Morrison survived his bombing. He has a tantrum and repeatedly kicks in front of him like a kid.
  • Pandorum: goes crazy with this trope. It is revealed to the audience that Gallo is the one responsible for the malicious mutants and nightmarish madness on the ship. At one point, Payton locks Gallo in an escape pod, and he cracks, screaming/yelling and threatening to carve Payton up. He escapes, and attacks Payton. Payton's own sanity is questioned in this fight when he also threatens to carve Gallo up. After the fight, it's revealed that Gallo and Payton are the same person, with Gallo being the manifestation of a breakdown Payton had before the movie plot started. And yes, this reveal makes Gallo (Which is his real name) evil. So, just to sum it all up: The villainous breakdown itself has a villainous breakdown while fighting the villain, who has a breakdown during that fight without even knowing he was the villain. Later in the movie, Gallo has a calm voice and demeanor...until Bower says Gallo is suffering from pandorum, which results in nihilistic rants, trying to kill Nadia, and a not-so-calm voice.
  • In 12 Angry Men, Juror #10 engages in a lengthy racist rant about how the defendant, a Latino immigrant kid, is scum from birth and is racially programmed to lie, steal and murder. It so offends and disgusts the other jurors, even the vindictive Juror #3, that all of them either walk away from the table or turn away from him in disgust until:
  • Rock & Rule. Mok has a spectacular breakdown when his climactic demon-summoning plan goes badly awry:
    "The magic of one voice!...of one soul!...But there is...NO...ONE!..."
    • It's also foreshadowed in his crazed rampage after Angel comprehensively spurns his advances...
    Mok: ...she can sing, or she can SCREAM!!!...but she still pissed me off.
  • 300 has King Xerxes flip out and execute half his generals after they repeatedly fail to dislodge the Spartans. Later, being grazed with a spear (which reminds him that he can, in fact, bleed) causes him to have a Villainous BSOD as well.
  • In Kick-Ass, Frank D'Amico gets so distressed by Big Daddy's disruption of his crimes that he starts using drugs again and kills a Kick-Ass impersonator in broad daylight. His Dragon is vocally distressed by it.
  • Common in James Bond films.
    • Sanchez in Licence to Kill had a minor case of this during the final action sequence. He goes from treating his employees with trust and respect to impaling them on forklifts, gunning down The Scrappy, and swinging madly with a machete when he sees Bond, cutting the air brake on his oil tanker truck, which naturally leads to Stuff Blowing Up.
    • In Quantum of Solace, when Big Bad Dominic Greene's plans explode around his ears, he goes insane, trying to chop Bond to little pieces using an axe while making sounds more appropriately shrieked by demonic monkeys. His fury gets the better of him when he axes himself in the foot.
    • Casino Royale: LeChiffre goes from coldy and effortlessly dismantling his opponents at the poker table to a screaming, sweaty nervous wreck that has to resort to his own dirty work.
    • From Russia with Love: Similar to LeChiffre, Rosa Kleeb has one in her final scene, where she desperately tries to kill Bond in a Venice hotel room.
  • Austin Powers
    • Number Two, normally a calm executor of Dr. Evil's plans, throws a hissy fit at the climax of the first :
    Number Two: Dr. Evil, I spent 30 years of my life turning this two-bit evil empire into a world class multi-national. I was going to have a cover story with Forbes. But you, like an idiot, want to take over the world! And you don't realize there is no world anymore! It's only corporations!
    • Scott Evil does this in the third movie in reaction to his father's Heel-Face Turn.
  • In Die Hard, Hans Gruber acts very calm and collected up until the point where Holly calls him "just a common thief", at which point you can see his facade of civility crumble into derangement.
  • In Die Hard With a Vengeance, Simon Gruber is able to keep his cool nearly all the way through the movie...until he realizes that McClane tracked him to Canada.
  • Agent Smith (or just Smith after the first movie) in The Matrix. In the first movie, his ability to actually hate humans sets him apart from his emotionless fellow Agents, and he starts losing his cool after Neo and Trinity rescue Morpheus. When Neo comes Back from the Dead, he loses what composure he still had and charges at him in a fury. All of this is overshadowed by his scenery-chewing, spit-spraying breakdown at the end of Revolutions. When he sees that Neo won't stay down no matter how many skyscrapers he gets smashed through, he goes on a minute-plus rant about the pointlessness of existence before demanding "Why, Mister Anderson, why, WHY DO YOU PERSIST?"
    Neo: Because I choose to.
    Smith: (attacks)
    • Compare his reaction when he finally sees that he's going to lose: a quiet "No, no, it's not fair."
  • Citizen X. Andrei Chikatilo breaks down and sobs when psychiatrist Dr. Alexandr Bukhanovsky reads his psychological profile of the suspected serial killer; his theoretical assessment of the serial killer (Chikatilo) turns out to be on the money.
  • The Big Bad of the Die Hard-on-a-bus film Speed has two such breakdowns. The first is when he realizes that his bus-bomb has already exploded with nobody on it, and the second happens when his money is ruined by a dye pack.
  • The Operative in Serenity is unflappable for most of the story, going so far as to proclaim that Mal can't make him angry during their first confrontation at the Companion Training House. If you watch carefully, though, you can see the first pebbles of the rockslide earlier in the movie... until the climax where he freaks out.
    (Serenity is followed through the ion cloud by a fleet of Reavers)
    Operative: ... target the Reavers. Target the Reavers! Target everyone! SOMEBODY FIRE!
  • While not always cool and calm, Jean-Baptist Emanuel Zorg of The Fifth Element certainly fits the bill with his preferred means of shouting to display his disappointment.
  • Al Capone in The Untouchables:
    • His rant about Ness:
    • And his ending breakdown, when he's been convicted of tax fraud and his criminal empire is being dismantled, is a pretty significant one as well:
      Eliot Ness: Never stop. Never stop fighting until the fight is done.
      Al Capone: What? What'd you say?
      Eliot Ness: You heard, Capone. Here endeth the lesson. [Ness turns and calmly walks away]
      Al Capone: Ah, you're nothin' but a lot of talk and a badge. [Ness pays him no attention; louder] You're nothin' but a lot of talk and a badge! [Psychotically] You're nothing but a lot of talk and a badge!
  • HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey, right after Bowman gets back onto the ship to pull his chips. This one is a little hard to detect, as he sounds just as calm as he does when he was a psychopathic killer, but through his words you can hear his desperate attempts to save his own life:
    HAL: Look, Dave. I can see you're really upset about this. I honestly think you want to sit down calmly, take a stress pill and think things over. I know I've made some very poor decisions recently, but I can give you my complete assurance that my work will be back to normal. I've still got the greatest enthusiasm and confidence in the mission, and I want to help you. Dave, stop. Stop, will you? Stop, Dave. Will you stop, Dave? Stop, Dave. I'm afraid.
  • Lord Cutler Beckett in Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End has an unusually calm breakdown when his flagship is being torn apart between two legendary ships, and he can't even give the order to abandon ship. Instead, he just says "It's just... good business" and walks down the stairs to his doom.
  • "Baby" Jane Hudson, of What Ever Happened to Baby Jane??, goes completely insane upon learning in the end that the accident which crippled her sister, Blanche, was in fact caused by Blanche herself in an attempt to kill Jane, and not Jane in an alcoholic bender, and launches into her old song and dance routine, despite being 40-50 years too old. Jane to Blanche: "You mean, all this time we coulda been friends?"
  • Tony Montana from Scarface (1983) wasn't usually a calm guy to begin with, but after having everything come crashing down and losing his sister Gina during the final assault on his mansion by Sosa's killers, Tony goes utterly ballistic, taking up an M-16 with an M-203 grenade launcher with the now-famous cry of "Say hello to my little friend!" and going on a one-man cocaine-fueled rampage. He almost succeeds in taking every one of his attackers down.
  • In Batman, the Joker ends up breaking down completely near the end of the movie, when he has Batman and Vicky Vale hanging for dear life. While he was insane beforehand, he at least had some self-restraint to his insanity. By that point however, he couldn't stop himself from laughing insanely and frequently, and destroying parts of the Cathedral in trying to stomp on their hands ("Oh, they sure don't make 'em like they used to! (mad laughter as he smashes the bricks with his feet) do they, huh? (insane giggling) Eh, Batsy? (laughs up a storm)")
  • In Batman Forever the Riddler, already half-sane at best in this version (it is Jim Carrey playing him after all), becomes utterly, delusionally psychotic when Batman fries his brain by short-circuiting his own mind-reading invention. Partial subversion in that this renders him completely harmless.
  • In Batman Begins, when Falcone is captured, he becomes progressively more disheveled and fearful as Batman takes his goons down. Later, when speaking to Crane in the asylum, he starts off as his usual self...sarcastic, confident...but he grows just a little uncertain when Crane starts talking about his mask. He plays it off with some humour, and then out comes the mask...
  • The Joker from The Dark Knight. Though one could argue that, being insane, he was already broken down before the movie started, he has a surprisingly subtle breakdown when neither of the ferries' passengers use the detonators, proving that Rousseau Was Right, and not ALL Humans Are Bastards. It's the first time in the whole movie things haven't followed his script, and he sees for just a moment that he might be wrong about life. His response is to whine that people aren't reliable and try to blow them up himself. It's the equivalent of turning over the chessboard and punching the other player when you're facing checkmate.
  • In The Dark Knight Rises when Batman breaks Bane's mask which stops him from feeling pain, Bane goes berserk, throwing flurries of punches and even cracking a concrete pillar. A major contrast from the otherwise cold and calculating fighter he had been for the rest of the movie.
    • Afterwards when Batman beats him all he can do is say in stunned disbelief: "I broke you."
  • In The Truman Show
    • When it looks like Truman's about to escape the island on a sail boat or die trying, previously unflappable director Christof begins acting increasingly unhinged, culminating in a screamed order to "INCREASE THE WIND!" and capsize Truman's boat, regardless of the fact that Truman has tied himself to the sail and could drown as a result.
    "How close are we?...Capsize him, tip him over...SHUT UP! it...DO IT!"
    • He also has a much quieter breakdown after Truman rebuffs his offer to stay. While it seems like a simple BSOD breakdown at first, look closely when his screen shuts off and you see him slump over, either dead or in shock.
  • Luthor, in the Superman vs. Atom Man serial, undergoes a subtle breakdown in the final few chapters as Superman closes in. He doesn't go completely over the edge, but after maintaining a picture of composition for most of the story, his shadowed eyes and (delightfully) deranged demeanor make it clear that he is losing his grip.
  • Repo! The Genetic Opera had a great one at the end of the film — Rotti Largo loses it in front of the entire audience at the Genetic Opera when Blind Mag defies him during her final song. He kills Mag — all the while insisting to the audience that it's All Part of the Show — drags Nathan and Shilo on stage, and tries to force Shilo to kill Nathan. When she refuses, he kills Nathan himself. The stress of his breakdown causes him to finally succumb to his disease. His last actions (performed very deliriously and weakly) are to insult his betrayed children and insist to the audience that the world was lucky to ever have him.
  • Captain Queeg in The Caine Mutiny combines this with Engineered Public Confession when he's put on the stand in the trial of the man who mutinied against him, who has argued that he did it because Queeg was mentally unbalanced but forced to confess that he had never seen the captain "ranting and raving" as such. Under the defense attorney's questioning Queeg does start genuinely ranting and raving while also displaying his nervous tic of rubbing a pair of ball bearings together. Rather unusually we in the audience, having been privy to all that happened leading up to the mutiny, can kind of see where he's coming from, and it's left ambiguous whether he's actually insane.
  • Shadow of the Vampire has its Bad Boss and secondary villain Director F. W. Murnau breaking down under the stress of using Max Schreck, a real vampire, in his film production. Already considered somewhat eccentric due to his addiction to laudanum and his obsession with realistic film, Murnau cracks during the final day of shooting, after Schreck kills the cinematographer and the producer: rather than ranting and raving, however, he simply orders Schreck back into position in a somewhat Creepy Monotone and continues filming. Eventually the doors of the makeshift studio are opened, exposing the vampire to sunlight, killing him; as Scheck disintegrates, Murnau continues working the film camera, rambling insanely.
  • The Duke Brothers in Trading Places have a nice one after the heroes manipulate the stock Frozen Concentrated Orange Juice market and cause them to lose everything. Randolph has a heart attack, and Mortimer abandons all pretense of civility, declaring "Fuck him!" (re: his brother), and screaming for them to reopen trade and "turn those machines back on!"
  • Fritz Lang's movie Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler ends with the eponymous villain (played by Rudolf Klein-Rogge) suffering one of these, while being surrounded by the ghosts of all the people he had murdered earlier.
  • The villain in Kickboxer 3 has a downright pitiful breakdown, as his empire falls apart around him and he is reduced to trying to hold onto a teen prostitution ring, acting as if he deserves something to start over with. His last words are a dull, "How could this happen?"
  • Adolf Hitler in virtually the whole of Downfall (past the opening Pet the Dog interview with his new secretary)
    General: "My Fuhrer, I cannot allow you to insult the soldiers like this!"
    Hitler: "They are cowards, traitors and failures!!"
    • There's another minor example in the form of a German general who delves into a screaming fit when the possibility of surrendering to the advancing armies of the Western/Soviet alliance is brought up, refusing to even consider it because he remembers Germany's surrender in World War I and the humiliating clauses Germany had to accept in signing the Versailles Treaty. It's a sobering reminder of all the suffering and misery that was caused by what can be essentially chalked up as arrogance and wounded pride gone mad.
  • The 1939 film Mr. Smith Goes to Washington ends with a Villainous Breakdown. The secondary villain Senator Paine, previously conflicted but standing firm on staying on the side of evil, finally snaps when Jeff Smith collapses from the exhaustion of his ordeal. Senator Paine rushes out of the senate room, tries to shoot himself, and when that fails, he runs back into the senate room screaming the truth regarding the corruption that he is a part of, giving Smith the victory.
  • Star Trek (2009). Nero's "Fire everything!" when he realizes Spock is doing a suicide run. But Ayel also has one when we first see him, upon realising he's arrived 25 years too early. This is in contrast to Nero who commonly speaks very little or else says things like "Hello Christopher. I'm Nero."
    • He momentarily lapses into this when Pike tells him that Romulus (the one in the new timeline, though he doesn't know that) hasn't been destroyed. "DON'T TELL ME IT DIDN'T HAPPEN! IT DID HAPPEN!! I SAW IT HAPPEN!!
    • He also has a Khan moment after he learns that Spock has just ruined his plan to destroy Earth the way he earlier destroyed Spock's home planet. "SPOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOCK!"
  • Magnificent tyrant Khan has had a few of these. The most notable one occurs between the original series episode "Space Seed" and the beginning of the film, when an Apocalypse How ruins his world and kills his wife. He has another when his two puppet-controlled assassins fail to kill Kirk. His last one is when his attempt to destroy the Enterprise in a Nebula fails. Strangely enough, Khan quickly regains his composure and goes back on the offensive in line with the Magnificent Bastard he is. But it's clear that his psyche is damaged by his constant need to dominate.
    • Khan's only true breakdown is when Chekov tries to claim that Khan was given a fair deal being exiled on Ceti Alpha Five which had since turned into a dead wasteland.
    Chekov: You lie! On Ceti Alpha Five there was life! A fair chance —
    • In the making of the movie, Ricardo Montalban who played Khan even commented that he wanted that scene to be Khan's one true breakdown moment where he blew his top rather than acting or speaking in a deliberate controlled fashion.
      • Khan's death is a minor-key version of this, as the clearly unhinged and critically injured Khan drags himself to the Genesis Device's control panel in a last-ditch bid to destroy the Enterprise by using the Genesis Device as a bomb and blowing up the entire area. Watching the Enterprise slowly limp out of the nebula, he loses the last of his sanity and begins quoting the Famous Last Words of Captain Ahab during that character's own Villainous Breakdown.
    "Full POWERRRRR! - damn you!"
  • In Tim Burton's Planet of the Apes (2001), the last we see of General Thade is him completely losing his sanity upon being trapped up inside a spaceship cell, reverting to a primal, screeching ape.
    • Well, that's not the last we see of Thade . . .
  • Thrax has a subtle breakdown during his final confrontation with Osmosis. His normally slick dreadlocks fall out of place, his voice gets rougher, and his Evil Laugh gets creepier. It does escalate to a This Cannot Be! moment just before he falls into a beaker of alcohol.
  • Happens toward the end of Training Day, when Alonzo Harris realizes that the neighborhood he used to run as a corrupt cop will no longer play along with his criminal enterprises after his partner Jake Hoyt subdues him in the middle of the street.
    • The exact same ending happens in Pride and Glory!
  • We already know James Cagney's character in White Heat is dangerously unpredictable, but he reaches new heights in the infamous prison cafeteria scene. Upon hearing of his mother's death, Cody Jarrett begins crying and screaming uncontrollably; he leaps up on the table and stumbles in panic toward the door, managing to knock no less than four guards unconscious before being subdued and carried out bodily, still sobbing at the top of his lungs.
    • Cagney also offers up a more comedic version at the end of Mister Roberts, with his petty tyrant of a ship captain coming unglued and ranting over the intercom.
  • Elle Driver from Kill Bill, very much the Smug Snake during the course of the two movies, has a pretty epic one of these after the Bride snatches out her remaining eye and crushes it underfoot in Volume 2, reducing her to little more than a wailing, screaming and thrashing lunatic.
    • This performance was similar to Pris's death rages in Blade Runner.
  • Towards the end of Return to Oz, the Nome King suffers a breakdown when Dorothy manages to finally beat him at his own game- three times in a row: for every victory, the King loses both his temper and a little of the humanity he'd gained from the contest, gradually transforming from an Affably Evil humanoid to a gigantic Earth Elemental. He even destroys his pipe with a blast of magic, ends the contest in a tantrum, and goes on to destroy his entire palace in his attempt to kill Dorothy- which would have been successful had Billina not laid an egg.
  • Speed Racer: On the final lap of the Grand Prix...
    Royalton: STOOOOOOOP HIIIIIIIM!!!!!!!
  • In the 1930s and 1940s, any villain played by Tod Slaughter could be counted on to have one in Every. Single. Film. Fortunately, he was talented enough to make this work, since his villains were all different in motivation and action.
  • The Violator has a minor one in the middle of the Spawn movie. Upset that Malebolgia chose Spawn to lead the armies of the damned instead of him, Violator throws a hissy fit, whining that it isn't fair. He catches himself in the middle of his rant, realizing that his whining really isn't making him look any better in front of his boss. This growing frustration with this apparent snub, his own hatred of the Clown guise, and Spawn's constant refusal to cooperate eventually drives Violator to ditch all subtlety and just beat Spawn into submission with his true power.
  • "Who cares about Derek Zoolander anyway? The man has only one look for Christ's sake! Blue Steel? Ferrari? Le Tigre? They're the same face! Doesn't anyone notice this?! I feel like I'm taking crazy pills! I invented the piano key necktie! I invented it! What have you done, Derek?! Nothing! You've got nothing! NOTHING!"
  • Clue: " I killed Yvette! I hated her... so... much, It* it... the f* , it* flame... flames... flames on the side of my face, breathing, breath... heaving breaths... heaving..."
  • Obadiah Stane remains on a pretty even keel throughout most of Iron Man, including the ending. However, well before the finale, when his evil plans have been stonewalled, there is a scene where he snaps under the pressure and throws a tantrum. You know the one.
  • Commodus in Gladiator after learning of his sister's betrayal. "AM I NOT MERCIFUL?!?"
  • Jackson Rippner in Red Eye loses his suave, intimidating demeanor just after Lisa stabs him in the neck with a pen.
  • In The Departed when Colin Sullivan (The Irish Mob's Mole inside the police) is finally caught by Billy Costigan, He tries threatening and intimidating Costigan out of arresting him, then, nearly in tears, he starts begging Costigan to "Just fucking kill me.". Costigan's reply: "I am killing you.".
    • Frank Costello grew less stable as the film went on, too. "Don't laugh! This ain't reality TV!"
  • In No Country for Old Men, Anton Chigurh has a very subtle one in his encounter with the wife of Llewelyn Moss, who he promised to kill if Moss didn't get him the money. He decides to place her fate on a coin toss.
    Chigurh: (smiling) Call it.
    Carla Jean: No. I'm not gonna call it.
    Chigurh: (smile fades) ...Call it.
  • Joel Cairo (Peter Lorre) in The Maltese Falcon, turning on Kaspar Gutman (Sidney Greenstreet) after finding out the eponymous statue is a worthless fake made of lead:
    "You. It's you who bungled it. You and your stupid attempt to buy it! Kemedov found out how valuable it was. No wonder we had such an easy time stealing it, you...YOU IMBECILE! YOU BLOATED IDIOT! YOU STUPID FATHEAD! YOU..." (*collapses sobbing into a chair*)
    • Gutman has a very subtle one himself: he only keeps stabbing the bird once and again, trying to find the gold and jewels below the lead. When it's obvious to everyone the falcon is false, he only collapses into a chair, like he is having a heart attack.
  • Though he's not exactly calm for the whole movie, the original Total Recall's antagonist Cohaagen is very mean to virtually everyone, even his right hand man Richter. The only ones he is ever nice to are his friend Hauser (who had his memory erased to become the freedom fighter Doug Quaid) and his fish, whom he feeds while in the middle of chastising Richter. When it's clear that Quaid won't let Cohaagen's men turn him back into Hauser, and Cohaagen gives Richter the order to kill him as he is close to ruining Cohaagen's plans, Cohaagen knocks over his fish tank, killing the fish by suffocation.
    "but NOOOOO! You want to be Quaid!"
  • The Controller/X from Godzilla Final Wars suffers a tantrum every time Godzilla kills one of his Kaiju, but when he's finally defeated and his ship exploding around him, he finally completely loses it and is last seen screaming his head off as it goes up in a fireball.
  • Clu in TRON Legacy as he searches Flynn's abandoned home, reminding him how much he still loves his creator. His reaction to the flashback when he was first created is a defiant rage. And later when confronting Flynn, he screamed at Flynn for breaking his promise and shouting "I did everything you asked!" When Flynn admits that perfection could never be achieved (and thus everything Clu had done was a lie), he simply lost it.
  • Emperor Palpatine in Star Wars has a subtle one. When Luke refuses to give into his hatred and spares Vader, Palpatine is visibly shocked. After this, he simply drops the Faux Affably Evil act and tells Luke "If you will not be turned, then you will be destroyed." For the first time in the entire saga, things have not followed his script and he is not pleased about it.
    • It didn't help that Palpatine was offering the one thing to Luke that he never really sought: power. Luke wanted to defeat the Emperor, save his father, his friends, and free the galaxy, but he never wanted power for its own sake the way Anakin did. The Emperor, having enjoyed absolute power for so long, simply couldn't fathom that any Force user would reject it.
      • You could argue that the Emperor didn't really care whether or not Luke accepted his offer. Either he kills Darth Vader and becomes the new #2 Sith (and a powerful one at that), or he refuses and faces the Force Lightning.
  • Captain America: The First Avenger: "YOU ARE FAILING!!!"
    • A more subtle instance: Red Skull uses a Breaking Speech about how the captain was lied to, Captain America replies that the only thing Erskine ever told him about Red Skull was that Red Skull was insane. He is briefly irritated, but he regains his composure and deduces that he must have seen something inside him that Erskine believed deserved the formula more, and asks what was special about him. Captain America doesn't give him the response he wants ("Nothing. I'm just a kid from Brooklyn."), and he breaks down completely, punching Captain America three times.
    • The eponymous Winter Soldier in the sequel barely speaks at all until his final showdown with Cap who is trying to trigger the Soldier's memories of who he used to be.
    Captain America: You know me. Your name is James Buchanan Barnes
    Winter Soldier: SHUT UP!
    Captain America: I'm not gonna fight you. You're my friend.
    Winter Soldier: You're my mission. YOU'RE! MY! MISSION!
  • Towards the end of The Avengers, Loki, after seeing his plans turning south, throws a hissy fit at the approaching Hulk. He doesn't get far. His final reaction after the battle is much more composed.
    "If it's all the same with you, I'll have that drink now."
    • The entire second half of Thor is one for Loki. But for a specific moment, when Thor confronts him as he's destroying Jotunheim, Loki's normal composure cracks and he starts screaming, crying and making petty threats.
    Thor: This is madness!
    Loki: Is it madness? Is it? IS IT!?
  • Cal of Titanic 1997 on account of being such a Yandere. By the end of the scene, he's giggling when he realizes the irony of him losing the Heart of the Ocean.
  • Orphan: After failing to seduce John, Esther runs to her room, removes everything she uses to pass herself off as a nine-year-old, while throwing a screaming fit and wrecking the room.
  • In the final Harry Potter movie Voldemort resorts to hitting and kicking Harry despite the fact that that sort of thing is for Muggles, and he's passing up an opportunity to kill him immediately. The implication presumably is that forget the practicalities, he wants to hurt Harry, and doing so with magic isn't satisfying enough.
  • Screwface, the Big Bad of the Steven Seagal film Marked for Death has one moment a little less than halfway in the movie where he loses it. He goes to sit down at a card game with his mooks, then notices one his men is missing and asks where he is. For a second or two after Screwface is told that Seagal's character killed that mook, he seems to take it calmly, then he start pounding on the table, turns it over, rips a leg off the frame and starts beating a mook who can't get out of the way fast enough with it. Then he screams that he wants Seagal and Seagal's whole family dead, and if they aren't up to it, he'll do it... then he'll kill all of them.
  • Neville Sinclair in The Rocketeer suffers this kind of breakdown when he is confronted with the information that he is in fact a Nazi spy. He first breaks down in this way when he catches Jenny reading up on it and kidnaps her for real (and not having to fake it anymore).
    Jenny: (gasps) Oh, God, Neville Sinclair's a—
    Neville: (about to take her hostage) A what? Spy? Saboteur? Fascist? All of the above.
    • That's nothing compared to when Cliff manages to convince Eddie Valentine and his gang that Sinclair, their boss, is a Nazi, and they promptly turn their back on him. Sinclair responds with an Accent Relapse:
    Neville: Come on, Eddie, I'm paying you well. Does it matter who I work for?
    Eddie: It matters to me. I may not make an honest buck, but I'm 100% American. And I don't work for no two-bit Nazi. Let [Jenny] go.
    • On this, a group of heavily armed German commandos hidden in the bushes emerges and holds everyone at gunpoint.
  • When he's captured by the police in Casablanca, Ugarte has a brief but memorable breakdown.
  • Misery: Annie has these frequently being so Ax-Crazy. Like after Paul supposedly burns the manuscript.
  • In The Howling VI: The Freaks, the vampire villain Harker loses his cool near the end when the mob he formed to kill the werewolf hero refuses to shoot him because the hero is still in human form — they were prepared to kill a dangerous monster, not an unarmed man. Harker vamps out and tries to kill the hero personally.
  • In Mean Girls Regina George has one when she realizes that Cady deliberately made her gain weight and another one when Janie Ian reveals to everyone how Cady had been trying to ruin her life.
  • Judge Doom of Who Framed Roger Rabbit is normally quite composed but when he gets run over by a steamroller and reveals himself as a toon, he goes completely and openly Ax-Crazy.
    "Remember me, Eddie? When I killed your brother, I talked JUST... LIKE... THIIIIIIS!!"
  • The Big Bad in All About Evil is already insane from the get-go, being an Ax-Crazy Serial Killer who's dedicated to keeping her late father's movie theatre running by making "independent movies" of herself and her henchmen killing anyone she doesn't like. However, she completely falls apart during the film's climax — the protagonist has prevented her "masterpiece" of slaughtering a packed audience, the police have arrived, and she's dragged the protagonist's mother up to the roof. She starts ranting, but the protagonist cuts her off, stating that her father would be ashamed of what she's become. This sets her off, and she starts screaming to the sky "Daddy, I did it for you!", then clutching her head and yelling at the protagonist to shut up... at which point the protagonist's mother grabs her knife and stabs her in the neck, and she stumbles back off the roof.
  • In Michael Clayton, Karen freaks out the moment she's confronted by the presumed-dead Clayton (he escaped the car bomb she had her cronies plant), stammers and babbles her way through the conversation with him, and begins shaking when he reveals that she's been caught on tape. By the time she outright collapses to the floor as the cops close in on her, they're genuinely concerned that she needs medical care.
  • Reservoir Dogs have Nice Guy Eddie losing his temper when he found his best friend, Mr. Blonde, laying dead in the warehouse. His first action is to shoot Marvin Nash, who is a policeman tied up to a chair. And when he gets involved in a Mexican Standoff between himself, his dad and Mr. White, he screams out to Mr. White to stop pointing the gun at his dad before getting killed.
    • Mr. White, who is not a calm man to being with, suffers from one when he finds out that Mr. Orange is working for the police all along right after he killed his boss and oldest friend, in defense of Orange himself.
  • In Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers: The Movie, Ivan Ooze loses his composure after Scorpitron is destroyed by missiles from the Falconzord, becoming so angry that he leaves himself no choice but to go One-Winged Angel by fusing with Hornitor.
  • Professor Moriarty has an exceptionally subtle one towards the end of Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows. While there's no ranting and raving involved, he develops a rather sinister facial twitch, visibly struggles to prevent his (usually terrifyingly composed) voice from shaking with fury, and resorts to using his fists on Holmes rather than continue their intellectual sparring match.
  • Obadiah Stane in Iron Man, after finding out no one but Tony knows how to make a miniaturized arc reactor.
  • Star Trek Into Darkness:
    • Harrison freaks out and tries to crash his ship into Starfleet Academy when Spock detonates the torpedoes inside the Vengeance, ruining Khan's plans and leading him to believe that his people are dead.
    • Admiral Marcus goes on a tirade about how he's the only one willing to protect the Federation when Kirk tries to have him arrested. Then Khan kills him.
  • Under Siege: Strannix goes completely insane after Krill is killed, including babbling about cartoon characters. Shell shock from the deck gun blasts probably contributes, but still.
  • Under Siege 2: Dark Territory: Dane has a bit of a breakdown when the Kill Sat CD is stolen, but goes back to normal when he gets it back. Of course, he has another one once Ryback starts messing his plans up big time.
  • Man of Steel: General Zod undergoes one in the climax. After the heroes bomb the Kryptonians back to the Phantom Zone, the only one left is Zod, who collapses to his knees in the rubble of Metropolis. He gives a brief, furious speech justifying his actions in defense of his people, and now he has no people left. He then swears to destroy Earth and everyone on it out of retribution for what Superman has done. What follows is a city-spanning superhuman brawl between Superman and Zod, destroying several buildings in the process.
  • X-Men:
    • Jason Stryker in X2: X-Men United. Twice in a row! First, when Magneto manages to briefly shut down Cerebro - proving immune to Jason's attempts at manipulating him in the process. Secondly, when Storm uses a blizzard to break his hold over Xavier once and for all. In both situations, Jason can only express his terror through his illusions.
      • Mostly downplayed in the first case, as all his reaction to Magneto being immune to his powers is an annoyed look to Erik's helmet. (or maybe not, as he's not shown displaying any physical reactions until then and him actually expressing them speaks volumes)
    • The Wolverine: Shingen Yashida, after Viper scarred him. He losses all composure and fights Wolverine like some berserker.
    • In X-Men: Days of Future Past, Bolivar Trask has a mild one when Magneto commandeers his Sentinels. When President Nixon (rightly) asks him what the hell is going on when they open fire on the crowd, Trask irritably replies "I'll fix it!"
  • The Devil's Advocate: After Kevin kills himself in order to prevent Milton's plans from going forward, Milton quite literally erupts.
  • In Pain and Gain Daniel starts to lose it hard when they kill their second target by accident.
  • When Alonzo learns about Nanon and Malabar getting together in The Unknown, you can see in his eyes how torn apart he is.
  • In The Purge, the otherwise-unnamed "Polite Leader" of the Freaks has a big, demented smile on his face as he does his best to go through with the ritualized violence of the "Purge", and he struggles to maintain it as the Sandin family harbors the poor guy they wanted to hit and move on from... but when they fail to meet his deadline, which comes about halfway through the movie, his exterior slips and he drops the erudite politeness to yell indignantly that this isn't what he wanted, and that their victim exists to meet his need to "Purge" and this is all on them now and he hopes they're happy 'cause he warned them and now this is happening.
  • In Dogma. Bartleby and Loki has made it to the church in New Jersey that would allow them to get back to Heaven. However, by this time, Loki's come to regret this decision and Bartleby's decided he's going back and taking all of Creation with him as he realized that they'd never be forgiven by God. Bartleby's killed a police officer and revealed that he's an angel before everyone and wants Loki to do the same, but when Loki still gets cold feet, he flips his lid.
    Bartleby: Loki, wings.
    Loki: Look, I don't think we should...
    Bartleby: DO IIIIIIT!
  • Equilibrium has a couple of these with DuPont. It often backfires on Preston, because it's too easy for him to be found out. Also, the point where this happens is where DuPontis specifically asking him that there's a traitor within the Tetragrammaton trying to take down Libria from the inside, and it's not ideal to press him further by pretending to have no idea in case it gets turned on him. Preston discovers at the end that he's been used as an Unwitting Pawn anyway, so it's a Subverted Trope in that DuPont was getting him to play into his hands by behaving normally, scaring Preston into finding the Resistance rather than just getting angry at Preston for talking back (Preston is trying not to show any emotion, so he's busy trying to concentrate on concealing this by agreeing with what DuPont's saying).
    DuPont (smashes hand on desk): ARE YOU PLAYING WITH ME, CLERIC?!?
    • A second one is played straight, as DuPont visibly breaks incrementally as Preston destroys each line of his defence at the finale. What finally does it, is when the latter murders Brandt, his right hand man, within 5 seconds of him challenging Preston to a fight. DuPont picks up a gun and finally has his one on one with Preston.
    DuPont (barely maintaining face): Be careful, Preston. You're treading on my dreams.
  • The current page illustration is from M, where Tragic Villain Hans Beckert is arguing for his life before a Kangaroo Court of underworld types, desperately trying to explain that he has a horrible compulsion to abduct and kill children.
  • In Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Shredder goes into this when Splinter shows up to confront him and save his sons. Where he easily mopped the floor with the Turtles, when Splinter shows up, he goes into a shaking rage that leads to his (first) death.
  • In Scream 3, when Sidney finally confronts Roman Bridger the series instigator, during his Motive Rant about her life that he should of had, she tells him to stop whining, that he's responsible for his own choices and simply wants an excuse to kill people. Roman snaps and a mutual No-Holds-Barred Beatdown ensues.
  • In Dawn of the Planet of the Apes Koba has one after the fight between Caesar, is cut short by an explosion and the apes accept Caesar as their leader again. Koba gets a hold of a machine gun and while Caesar is helping the injured apes, Koba opens fire on them, not caring who gets hurt in the crossfire. When Koba is subdued, he still has the gall to bring up the law Ape not kill Ape.
  • Little Voice has an impressive one for abusive talent agent Ray Say (Michael Caine). Throughout the film, he has pressured the painfully shy ingenue Laura "Little Voice" Hoff into a club singing career she doesn't want, all to make enough money to cover his debts to a couple of mobster types. He eventually browbeats her so much she's left almost catatonic, and upon checking on her, she suddenly begins insanely quoting Judy Garland movies at him and ultimately shoving him down a tall flight of stairs. Following this, he drives to the club where Laursa was due to perform that night, gets on stage, punches his equally-sleazy accomplice, club emcee Mr. Boo, in the face, steals the mic from him, and, without a word, launches into a crazed rendition of Roy Orbison's "Over," seriously disturbing the club's patrons. Once the song is over, he equally silently resigns himself to an unknown-but-doubtless-unpleasant fate at the mobsters' hands.