8 Great Russian Movie Villains

As Russian troops roll into Ukraine, Vladimir Putin has reminded us that Russians have been some of our greatest movie villains. Whether the characters have been agents of the Soviet Union or criminal oligarchs who seized power after the fall of the Berlin Wall, screenwriters have often turned to the Ivans to find an enemy for a hero to vanquish.

Hollywood has a habit of painting America’s enemies with a broad brush. Think about how Germans and Japanese characters were portrayed in World War II. If anything, movies have treated Russian villains as even more extreme caricatures, especially during the Cold War. These characters may not represent the Russian people, but they make excellent movie bad guys.

There are hundreds of Russian villains in Hollywood movies, but here are eight of the best.

1. The Soviet Army ("Red Dawn," 1984)

In this classic written and directed by John Milius, the Oscar-nominated screenwriter of "Apocalypse Now," a group of Colorado teens goes guerilla after the Soviet Union invades the United States of America. Can the second-mightiest military in the world hold its own against Patrick Swayze, Charlie Sheen, C. Thomas Howell, Jennifer Grey and Lea Thompson? Not a chance.

The Russian-led Army thinks the invasion will be easy because Americans are spineless and weak, but a self-trained unit of high school athletes shows them otherwise. Two generations of survivalist militias have been eternally grateful for the inspiration.

2. Ivan Drago ("Rocky IV," 1985)

Rocky (Sylvester Stallone) agrees to train Apollo Creed (Carl Weathers) for an exhibition bout against Soviet boxer Ivan Drago (Dolph Lundgren). The 'roided-up Russian beats the American boxer to death, and Drago shows no remorse. Rocky demands a bout with Drago and travels to Moscow for a Christmas Day match against the Russian.

Drago meets his match, and his Soviet trainers chew him out just like a Russian coach lit into the young skater Kamila Valieva after she botched her routine at the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics.

3. Xenia Onatopp ("GoldenEye, 1995")

After the Soviet Union fell, how would the James Bond franchise survive in a post-Cold War world? Russian mobsters came to the rescue and gave MI6 a new enemy. Xenia Onatopp (Famke Janssen) is a military-trained operative who's doing the dirty work for former British agent Alec Trevelyan (Sean Bean). To save the world from an EMP space weapon, Bond (Pierce Brosnan) has to get past Onatopp first.

4. Viggo Tarasov ("John Wick," 2014)

Family can be such a burden. Russian mobster Viggo Tarasov (Michael Nyqvist) is stuck with an idiot son, Iosef (Alfie Allen), who picks a fight with retired hitman and possible Marine veteran John Wick (Keanu Reeves).

Tarasov knows Wick's skills, since the assassin used to work for him before he cut a deal to get out of the life. When Wick wants revenge against Iosef for killing his dog, Tarasov picks his family over a rational decision and declares war on the gunman.

Of course, if Viggo had been a better father, maybe Iosef wouldn't be such a moron. Tarasov is a truly bad man and puts up a fight, but there's a reason there are two more John Wick movies, with a fourth one on the way.

5. Yulian Kuznetsov ("Nobody," 2021)

It's the plot so nice they used it twice. Derek Kolstad wrote the screenplays for all three "John Wick" movies so far and recycled "Wick" #1 for a story about Hutch Mansell (Bob Odenkirk), an older ex-hitman who's got a wife, two children and a boring day job.

Russian mobster Yulian Kuznetsov (Aleksei Serebryakov) has an idiot kid brother named Teddy (Aleksandr Pal). Teddy and his thug friends think they're picking a fight with a sad, old dude on a public bus, but that old dude is Hutch and he kicks their asses and puts Teddy in the hospital.

Yulian reluctantly has to stand up for his brother, aims for revenge on Hutch and then things go very badly for the Russian mob. "Nobody" doesn't feel like a copy of "John Wick," which is both a credit to each film's director (Ilya Naishuller and Chad Stahelski, respectively) and to the durability of the Russian villain.

6. Rosa Klebb ("From Russia With Love," 1963)

In the second James Bond movie, former Soviet SMERSH operative Rosa Klebb (Lotte Lenya) has joined the SPECTRE international crime organization. She's set to lead a team tasked with getting revenge on Bond (Sean Connery) for killing SPECTRE operatives.

After Red Grant (Robert Shaw) fails to get the job done, it's up to Klebb to take him out with one of the series' best weapons. She's no match for 007's charm, and Bond survives after he turns a SPECTRE agent with his romantic skills.

7. Lt. Col. Sergei Podovsky ("Rambo: First Blood Part II," 1985)

It's a perfect Reagan-era fantasy. The Vietnam War is over, and Soviet troops are secretly advising the Vietnamese military as they continue to hold U.S. military personnel as prisoners of war. John Rambo (Sylvester Stallone) is bailed out of the jail cell he landed in after the first movie and sent on a secret mission to rescue those POWs.

The mission is a farce. No one expected him to actually find prisoners, and the U.S. military cuts him loose. Rambo is captured by the enemy and faces interrogation by Soviet Lt. Col. Sergei Podovsky (Steven Berkoff), who's delighted to have a chance to torture an American.

Podovsky, like most Russian movie villains, underestimates the resourcefulness, bravery and ingenuity of the American soldier.

8. Boris Badenov and Natasha Fatale ("The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle")

Boris Badenov and Natasha Fatale are technically movie villains because there's a 2000 movie called "The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle" that features Jason Alexander and Rene Russo as the live-action versions of the famous cartoon spies. The movie just might be the worst one that Robert DeNiro (as "Fearless Leader") has ever made.

Let's instead remember "The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle and Friends" animated series that aired from 1959-1964. Boris Badenov (Paul Frees) and Natasha Fatale (June Foray) played the obviously Russian spies who were said to be from the fictional nation of Pottsylvania.

For some unknown reason, their Fearless Leader (Bill Scott) thought moose and squirrel were the #1 barrier to espionage, and Boris and Natasha repeatedly tried and failed to defeat Bullwinkle and Rocky.

Bonus: Egor Korshunov ("Air Force One," 1997)

OK, let's stretch things a bit here. In "Air Force One," Egor Korshunov (Gary Oldman) kidnaps the president (Harrison Ford) by hijacking his plane. Korshunov is a Soviet military veteran who's become a Kazakhstan ultra-nationalist terrorist after the United States arrested the Kazakh dictator Gen. Ivan Radek (Jürgen Prochnow).

Is he Russian? No. He was in the Soviet military back in the day when Americans didn't distinguish between Russians, Georgians, Kazakhs, Ukrainians, Latvians or Lithuanians. He's also a very bad man, one who will feel the wrath of the commander in chief.

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