5. Theodore Donald ‘Donny’ Kerabatsos (Steve Buscemi)—The Big Lebowski
In a world of cynical con-men, sleazy pornographers and seedy private eyes, Donny is a welcome oasis of niceness and wide-eyed naivete. Always a step or two behind the conversation, Donny doesn’t say much (an inside joke after Buscemi played motor-mouthed characters in previous films from the Coen Brothers), but he seems possessed of an almost Zen-like peace, possibly having something to do with the fact that he apparently loved surfing, something we all find out about only as his ashes are being dumped out of a coffee can. It’s rather perverse of the Coens to kill off the nicest person in their movie, but that’s exactly the sort of shit these weirdos enjoy doing.
Nicest Moments: “Phone’s ringing, Dude.” “Lebowski? That’s your name, Dude!” “I am the walrus.”
6. Captain/Commissioner James Gordon (Gary Oldman)—Batman Begins/The Dark Knight
Thank you to Christopher Nolan for finally giving us a James Gordon that is right. After being played as a buffoon on television and the movies for years, we finally got a weary, kind, and decent man, and he’s played by Gary “EVVVVERYOOOOONE!” Oldman of all fucking people. From the first moment you see him in Batman Begins, putting a jacket over young Bruce Wayne and assuring him that everything’s going to be okay, the decency radiates from him as intensely as the psychosis from Oldman’s showier characters. Virtually the only good cop in a corrupt town and the first person to see Batman as an ally rather than a criminal, James Gordon is such a fundamentally good man that his “death” in The Dark Knight turned me against that otherwise excellent movie until it was eventually revealed as a hoax.
Nicest Moments: Comforting the grieving Bruce Wayne, turning down dirty money, joining Batman in his now two-man war against crime and corruption in Gotham.