Colonel Badass / Live-Action Film

• There is a Russian movie named The Apocalypse Code, one of the better Russian action movies, actually, whose protagonist is an Action Girl serving in the Russian special forces. Obviously, she is a colonel. Which is revealed just before she gets serious, topping all her previous stunts.
• Apocalypse Now features two Colonel Badasses. The first is Colonel Kurtz, who had the credentials to be a general but chose a life in the shit. While fighting in Vietnam, he goes kill-crazy and creates an army of zealots who worship him like a god. The other is Lt.Col. Bill Kilgore, a bulletproof badass who surfs in warzones and enjoys the aroma of napalm like a nice cup of joe. In the Redux edition, however, he's taken down a peg after his surfboard is stolen and he broadcasts messages begging for it back.
• Armageddon (1998):
  • Colonel Willie Sharp, pilot of the space shuttle. Can disarm nine-foot-long nuclear weapons with only 20 seconds and minimal assistance. Also the only guy trusted with a firearm on the whole vessel (making him the only one badass enough to bring a gun onto a spaceship), and the only guy with enough balls to disobey a Presidential order for the greater good of the planet.
  • Colonel Lev Andropov (Peter Stormare) also qualifies: not only does he save AJ (Ben Affleck) when the space station blows, he also restarts a FREAKIN' space shuttle. He also gets most of the best lines in the movie:
    Lev: I AM THE ONLY CERTIFIED ASTRONAUT HERE, AND I AM SAVING YOUR AMERICAN ASS!!!
• Colonel Miles Motherfucking Quaritch of Avatar. He's obviously the villain, but that doesn't stop him from modding his AMP suit with a gigantic combat knife, or running out into Pandora's toxic atmosphere, guns blazing, without bothering to put a gas mask on. In one instance, it takes him about 11 seconds to react to the fact that he is, in fact, on fire. Quaritch is in fact, so badass he inspires major Rooting for the Empire. For a time, it was his image that appeared on this trope's main page.
  • So badass that James Cameron has promised that Quaritch is coming Back from the Dead to reappear in all the sequels.
• Lieutenant Colonel Danny McKnight in Black Hawk Down. He casually walks from a convoy of Humvees to a building, through the open, while Rangers all around him are diving for cover and flinching. He ignores a gunshot wound to his throat that would have opened his carotid artery if it had been a millimeter to the right. After that injury, one of the Rangers tells him he doesn't need to go back out to save the rest of his men. He just smokes his cigar, looks at the guy like he's an idiot, then rides out with the 10th Mountain Division to get the rest of his men.
• Arnold Schwarzenegger's character John Matrix takes this trope to an utter extreme in Commando (1985). Although his character is a retired Special Forces colonel, Arnie still manages to kick enough ass for several movies.
• Colonel Nicholas Alexander, played by Lee Marvin in his final performance, was the only man who could possibly give Chuck Norris' Major Scott McCoy orders in The Delta Force.
• He may have been a Psycho for Hire, but Col. Koobus of District 9 was also incredibly badass. He was consistently shown to be a supremely competent leader of his men, never lost his cool in the heat of battle (though he did start to lose it when he was bragging to Wikus about killing him), showed bravery even in the face of overpowering alien weaponry, and when he was surrounded by all sides by Prawns, who were going to tear him apart regardless, he still went down fighting.
• Thoroughly averted in Dr. Strangelove: Group Captain (RAF for Colonel) Mandrake is a bit of a wimp and fails to properly stand up for himself when around other domineering American officers, while US Army Colonel "Bat" Guano does not even understand his own mission, and is instead obsessed with eliminating "preverts."
• Colonel Günther Reza of Duck, You Sucker! a Silent Antagonist and Implacable Man who survives having a bridge dropped on him, a train explosion, and having half a machinegun clip emptied into him before finally going down.
• Eve of Destruction: Colonel Jim McQuade to a realistic degree. An army veteran, expert marksman and counter-terrorism expert, he's the guy the government calls in to take down a rogue killer android, but he does get pretty banged up over the course of the film.
• A Far Off Place: Colonel Theron, the rifle-wielding head of the anti-poaching patrols, regularly tracks down dangerous poachers (shooting two who draw guns on him in the opening scene) and leads the rescue efforts for the kids. He advocates a hard, no-nonsense approach to dealing with poachers that is at least partially vindicated by the murders of his more peacful associates.
• Colonel Douglas Mortimer in For a Few Dollars More, a former Confederate Army colonel who carries a veritable arsenal with him wherever he goes, and has a personal score with Big Bad El Indio.
• Col. Thursday in Fort Apache... well, sort of... at least until he orders the infamous Thursday's Charge, which results in the utter destruction of half the regiment.Thursday is an Expy of George Armstrong Custer, a real-life Colonel Badass, who would be remembered as a great cavalry leader except for one mistake...
• In the movie Glory, Matthew Broderick plays a Real Life Colonel Badass; in this case Col. Robert Gould Shaw the son of Boston abolitionists who commanded the Union Army's first black troops in the Civil War.
• Col. Andrea Stavros in The Guns of Navarone movie adaptation, the best hand-to-hand fighter in the group.
• Colonel John Marlowe (John Wayne) in The Horse Soldiers. A railroad construction engineer in his Pre-War Civilian Career, Marlowe is selected to lead a raid behind Confederate lines to destroy a railroad and supply depot at Newton Station.
• In I Am Legend Will Smith's character is Lieutenant Colonel Robert Neville. A brilliant scientist who also managed to survive being badly outnumbered by cannibalistic hordes. It wasn't because he was a punk...
• Col. Hans Landa, a.k.a. the Jew Hunter, from Inglourious Basterds. The epitome of both Magnificent Bastard and Wicked Cultured.
  • He does end World War II by helping the Basterds kill the German High Command.
• In Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull we learn Indy attained the rank of colonel during World War II while working as an agent for the OSS (the precursor to the CIA). Colonel Doctor Irina Spalko most definitely counts too.
• Averted in Ip Man, where Japanese Colonel Sato is a Smug Snake who only hits people when they're in no position to fight back. Preferably from safe up high behind a gun.
• Col. Hardy from Man of Steel possibly outdoes Quaritch in terms of sheer badassitude, taking on a Kryptonian enemy with a combat knife —and no robot suit— and managing to pull a no-score draw, losing his life but banishing the villain back to the Phantom Zone in the process.
• Marvel Cinematic Universe:
  • Lt. Col. (full Colonel as of Iron Man 3) James Rhodes, who has a suit of powered armor.
  • Col. Nick Fury, the director of SHIELD and architect of the Avengers. Extra badass props for Fury being portrayed throughout the Marvel Cineverse by none other than Samuel L. Jackson.
  • Col. Chester Philips, who lead the Strategic Scientific Reserve in WWII, the precursor to SHIELD, and commanded Captain America.
• Colonel James Braddock, from the Missing in Action film series. Played by none other than Chuck Norris, it's a given he's able to kick as much Viet Cong butt as he does.
• MonsterVerse:
  • Kong: Skull Island: Colonel Packard has been through it in Vietnam, and he goes through much worse on the island and still survives for quite a while through the film. Unfortunately, he also becomes a General Ripper due to his Vietnam-instilled Colonel Kilgore.
  • Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019): Colonel Diane Foster leads Monarch's military force the G-Team, at one point getting into a firefight with the eco-terrorists looking to release Ghidorah and killing Asher, Jonah's second-in-command. Had she not prioritized Asher because of his advance on Mark, she could have killed Jonah there and then.
• Colonel Vincent "Killer" Kane in The Ninth Configuration is a legendary soldier during the Vietnam War. Before the film starts, he suffers a breakdown after chopping a Child Soldiers head off with a wire garrote. He dedicates himself to healing instead of harming, but ultimately a bar full of bikers learn that it's still not a good idea to bully his patients.
• Colonel Dax in Paths of Glory. Try not flinching when enemy shells are exploding randomly less than 20 yards away from you. Go on, try. We'll wait.
• Col. Benjamin Martin in The Patriot (2000). Single-handedly killed a platoon of Redcoats, including at least three with a tomahawk. Colonel Tavington is an Evil Brit version, kicking the butts of Mel Gibson's ragtag Rebel militia.
  • You gotta give it up for Tavington when his troops are caught with their pants down by a bunch of angry rebels, his soldiers are getting shot all around him. He just stands there, calmly reloading his pistol (which takes a good 20 seconds) and shooting one rebel after another.
• Colonel Graham from Posse is the evil version. Losing an eye just makes him more determined than ever to hunt down the heroes and retrieve his gold.
• Col. Sam Trautman, the former trainer and commander of none other than John Rambo. He's more of the mentor in the movies than Colonel Badass, but he gets this status because of his line in the first movie:
  Sheriff Will Teasle: Where in God's name did this Rambo come from...
  Col. Trautman: God didn't make Rambo. I made him.
  (Cut to a shot of the tent's entrance. A silhouette of a bereted and Badass LongCoated individual is standing there.)
• Colonel Pembroke (James Coburn) in A Reason to Live, a Reason to Die!. He escapes from a Confederate POW Camp and makes his way back into Union territory, despite being branded a coward and wanted as a traitor. He then gets himself arrested to be taken into a Union fort commanded by an old friend of his. He then assembles his own team of Boxed Crooks to undertake a Suicide Mission to retake the impregnable fort he surrendered, and kill the major he surrendered to.
• Colonel Cord McNally in the first quarter or so of John Wayne movie Rio Lobo is introduced as a seasoned officer, who personally leads the pursuit for a band of confederate train robberies, tracks them for miles cross country and doesn't' hesitate to go riding after about a dozen men alone as his command is gradually forced to split up. After being captured he still manages to turn the tables on his captors. In the post-war sections of the movie, he has left the army to track down the men who betrayed him during the war, and shows signs of becoming a fairly competent gunslinger.
• Lt. Col. Frank Slade from Scent of a Woman. He does the tango with a beautiful stranger who's waiting on her boyfriend, drives a Ferrari BLIND, and completely and utterly owns snobby schoolmasters. Plus, he's played by Al Pacino, which doubles his badassitude.
• Completely averted (as to be expected) in the film Spaceballs, in the figure of Colonel Sandurz. Whassa matter, Colonel Sandurz ...CHICKEN?!
  • Considering that he's Grand Moff Tarkin if Tarkin were stupid rather than evil, this is to be expected.
• Colonel Rhumbus in Spies Like Us. He knocks out his own squad of elite ninja soldiers and then takes our heroes through accelerated GLG20 training. His salutes are so snappy that you can hear his gloved hand cutting through the air.
• In the film adaptation of Street Fighter, Guile has the Colonel rank (he is a Major in the games' continuity), and goes against the Allied Nations' orders to lead a strike team and raid Bison's base to rescue kidnapped AN troopers and relief workers. He's also the one to take on Bison himself, beating him even after he starts using his Psycho Electro powers. This also holds true to the cartoon, which is a direct sequence of the film.
• Colonel Min Se-hoon, the Inspector Javert character in the Korean film The Suspect. His introductory scene involves him dropping one of his men out of a plane without a parachute in order to save another man's life, then coolly picking up a spare chute, diving after the falling guy, catching him in mid-air, slapping him back to life when they hit the ground, then swaggering away smoking a cigarette. He then puts on a leather jacket and shades and spends the rest of the film ripping apart a secret government conspiracy while simultaneously hunting down a North Korean master assassin.
• In Top Gun the soft-spoken, gruffly avuncular Commander Mike "Viper" Metcalf and the foul-mouthed, quick-tempered, cigar-chomping Commander Tom "Stinger" Jordan provide contrasting, but equally classic, examples of this trope. Maverick himself is this in the sequel, holding the rank of Captain, which is the Navy's equivalent to a full bird Colonel.
• Transformers Film Series: Lt. Colonel William Lennox. Does he sit behind and command his troops from the command post? Fuck no! He takes on the Decepticons with them head-on! Though he's not a Colonel until the third film.
• Colonel Stryker in X2: X-Men United.
  Stryker: I was pilotin' Black Ops missions in the jungles of North Vietnam while you were suckin' on your mama's tit at Woodstock, Kelly. Don't lecture me about war. This already is a war.