It is hard to think of a Hollywood director as well loved by both mainstream audiences and fans of artistic nuance as Quentin Tarantino. His offbeat humor and love of ultraviolence each give his films a unique style that has widespread appeal while his nonlinear storytelling and ensemble casts defy the usual conventions of scriptwriting.
Of course, what Tarantino is best known for is having some of the smartest dialogue in film today. There is a punderful vulgarity in the way his characters speak which is both lyrical and down to earth. With that in mind, it is worth examining the characters who speak such smart lines. Here are ten of Quentin Tarantino’s characters ranked by their intelligence:
Butch Coolidge (Pulp Fiction)
As a professional boxer, Butch has made a career getting repeatedly punched in the head. As such, he is a lot more likely to be described as brain damaged than as anything reminiscent of intelligent. This may be why he did something as dumb as cross the gang lord Marcellus Wallace. It may also be why Butch risked his life to retrieve a watch from his apartment when he was being hunted. And why he helped save Wallace despite the mobster’s animosity toward him.
Butch is a man of fists, not brains. That said, he was smart enough to be able to outmaneuver Wallace and his henchmen at least there separate times.
O-Ren Ishii (Kill Bill)
The yakuza are not merely Japan’s organized criminals. They’re also highly xenophobic ultranationalist right wing extremists. For a young woman with both Chinese and American ancestry like O-Ren Ishii to assume control of the yakuza is both proof of her strategic genius and her ruthlessness
She was definitely a child protege. After her parents were murdered by Boss Matsumoto, she got her vengeance against him while still only eleven. By the time she was twenty, she was one of the world’s master assassins. She also worked for Bill as part of his Deadly Viper Assassination Squad.
Mr. Orange (Reservoir Dogs)
Reservoir Dogs was Tarantino’s first big breakout hit. It was, as its core, a film about a heist, though the heist itself is never seen, just the events leading up to it and the aftermath after everything goes horrifyingly wrong.
Part of the setup of this heist is that none of the men knew each other. They used false names and each one only had a single job to focus on completing. In the opening to the second scene, two men are in a car. One of them, Mr. White, is driving, while the other, Mr. Orange, is bleeding out in the back seat of the car after being gut shot–except Mr. Orange isn’t who he claims to be. He’s actually an undercover cop who infiltrated the mob and got picked for what was supposed to be a clandestine operation.
Django (Django Unchained)
Django is an unconventional hero. He is introduced as a slave who is granted his freedom early in the movie by the bounty hunter Dr. King Schultz. Django accompanies Schultz working as a bounty hunter, but soon the two set off on a quest to liberate Django’s wife from captivity.
Despite no formal education, Django is a quick learner with keen instincts and a knack for strategic thinking. He learns skills like horsemanship, marksmanship, and acting in a short amount of time. He even infiltrates the inner circle of a major plantation owner, then outsmarts the Australians hired to get rid of him when he is finally caught.
Beatrix Kiddo (Kill Bill)
There are two types of Tarantino films. Some of his movies exist within a shared universe of violence and alternate history, while others are movies that the characters in his shared universe watch. The Kill Bill films fall into this latter category and their protagonist Beatrix Kiddo is sharp as a Hattori Hanzo katana.
More commonly known as the Bride, Kiddo is a world class assassin, having mastered multiple martial arts forms and weapons techniques. She speaks multiple languages and has a gift for assuming feigned aliases, as seen when she pretends to be a Canadian tourist. She even knows the Five Point Palm Exploding Heart Technique.
Hans Landa (Inglorious Basterds)
Hans Landa is a Nazi. He is also a gifted polyglot, politician, and military strategist. His anti-Semitism does not stem from his ignorance, but rather is the product his personal prejudices and his sociopathic desire to carry out the racist pogroms of the Third Reich.
Beyond his mastery of multiple languages, Hans has shown himself to be skilled in tricking people into confessing to crimes through elaborate winding conversational traps, as he does in the opening scene of Inglorious Basterds. For all his intellect, it still isn’t enough to save him from being physically marked as a war criminal.
Jules Winnfield (Pulp Fiction)
Jules is probably the most famous character in all of Quentin Tarantino’s films. The monologue he gives at the beginning of Pulp Fiction is possibly Samuel L. Jackson’s singular greatest performance. In fact, that scene–in which Jules recites a fictional bible verse before executing someone–is so famous it was even incorporated into an Easter Egg in the MCU.
What makes Jules so smart is not that he’s an academic or strategist or linguist, but that he’s heavily implied to be a prophet. After witnessing a miracle, he changes his whole life to line up with the divine and sets out to live as a holy man.
Major Marquis Warren (Hateful Eight)
Major Marquis Warren is another character played by Samuel L. Jackson (the actor has a role in six of Tarantino’s films). This complex character is a bounty hunter and former soldier who is guilty of brutally hurting others, but who also has a softer side.
What makes Warren so gifted is his correspondence with President Abraham Lincoln. Warren carries a letter from the President on his person at all times. It turns out to be a forgery, but it is so convincing that people believe the contents of the letter, fooling people throughout his travels across the country.
Aldo Raine (Inglorious Basterds)
Lieutenant Aldo Raine is a member of the United States Armed Forces in World War II who leads a squad of Jewish soldiers on black ops missions behind enemy lines, spreading fear through the ranks of Hitler’s armies and eliminating key targets to help the Allied Forces.
At his most polite, Aldo is plainspoken, though more often his tongue is almost as sharp as his knife. His highest ambition seems to be collecting Nazi scalps while his artistic tastes seem relegated to the flesh calligraphy of carving Swastikas into Nazi skulls. Two things make Aldo so highly ranked on this list. First, he is an incredibly gifted military strategist, using asymmetric warfare inspired by Native American tactics. Secondly, he executes a plan that leads directly to the death of Hitler in the alternate history of Tarantino’s shared universe.
Bridget von Hammersmark (Inglorious Basterds)
Aldo may be the one who leads the operation to kill Hitler, but it is Bridget von Hammersmark who masterminds the undertaking. While von Hammersmark is one of several characters that critics point to as being unfairly treated by Tarantino, she is probably the singular most important person he’s created for his shared universe.
Von Hammersmark is a popular actress in German cinema who also works as a spy for the Allies, risking her life to give them information. She comes up with a plan to help assassinate Hitler at a major movie debut, then when the initial plan is nearly undone after half the people involved are killed in a basement shootout, she figures out a way to salvage the plan. After changing the course of history, it’s hard not to admire her genius!
