Being a man is brilliant. You get to fight, drive cars through explosions, shag birds, drink beer, and be an asshole. But what really make a man a man? Muscles? Sure. Blood, guts, and fisticuffs? It helps. A bit of nationalism? Of course. Wildly improbable baddies, snakes, the Mafia, guns, lots of guns, boxing, and rude words? All are welcome. But manly movies are the real cornerstone of our species - while women are reading Cosmo and buying shoes, us alpha males are out saving the universe with our shirts off. If you've started to realise that the music of Coldplay is beautiful and you're thinking twice about buying that patchouli oil, then pin open your eyeballs and consume the movies on this list: it'll guarantee any rogue homosomes in your DNA will be swiftly eradicated. However, women should be warned: the films on this list could kill you stone dead if viewed in a single sitting.



20. EDDIE MURPHY RAW (1987)

Okay, so it's 83 minutes of a man in an obscene purple outfit telling jokes. No guns, no explosions, nothing like that. Swearing, however, is big, clever and very, very manly: Eddie Murphy Raw held the record for the most 'fucks' for three long years. That's 223 fucks, or a Fuck-Per-Minute Count or 2.48FPM's (it was eventually dethroned by Goodfellas, a film that could only manage a paltry FPM of 1.6). Raw also contains, in no particular order; fire-shooting dicks; casual racism; misogyny; fighting; a bitter, fucked-off Eddie Murphy ranting about gold-diggers; Jamaicans with huge schlongs; and, as Eddie's Dad in a pre-credits sequence, the man's motherfucking man, Samuel. L. Jackson. Dave Chappelle only wishes he was this manly.



Manliest moment: Taking off that awkward-looking purple vest to a chorus of female screams.



19. HENRY PORTRAIT OF A SERIAL KILLER (1986)

The bleakest entry in our catalogue of testosterone, Henry proves that being a man isn't all fun and games - sometimes it's murder. This aimless, formless, 90-minute exposition on execution sees Michael Rooker (you know the face but not the name) dispense with absolutely everyone he's ever met pointlessly and with great aplomb. His best friend, his sisters, the guy who sold him a dodgy TV and random strangers are chopped to pieces, raped, strangled and are hacked up with a buzzsaw before being stuffed in bags and dropped by the side of the road. It's all in a days work for the monosyllabic personality-vacuum that is Henry. This kind of utterly bleak, pointless, hopeless murder-as-masturbation is the existentialist man's feast. And Henry films it all with a stolen video camera.



Manliest moment: "Yeah. I killed my mama. I shot her. I shot her dead."



18. DIE HARD WITH A VENGEANCE (1995)

Like any man, sometimes you get a hangover. It's inevitable. Naturally, when John McClane gets a hangover, it's also the day he gets targeted by a European nutjob intent on blowing up New York City. Before long, poor old John is Simple Simon's puppet on a string, defusing bombs in litter bins and walking around Harlem with 'I hate niggers' written on his sandwich board. There's a reason McClane is so brow-beaten, and it's not just the terrorist attack - he's about to divorce his lady wife. Doesn't she know this guy is a hero? Die Hard With A Vengeance has all the mangredients needed for a filling meal: car chases, gold bullion, dead Germans, hangovers, bombs, quipping, and Samuel L Jackson shouting very loudly. It's 100% a man's movie.



Manliest moment: Bruce, sweaty and in a grubby vest, fights a henchman with a big chain.



17. RAMBO: FIRST BLOOD II (1985)

Stallone makes his second appearance in this list, this time cast as an oiled, stripped-to-the-waist human rocket launcher. What most people call Hell, he calls home. If Descartes had seen this film, he would have changed his ethos to "I blow things up, therefore I am." With the highest body count in cinema (for at least a year), Rambo made front pages as the most violent film ever made, with faceless baddies dispatched in a manner of ways that rivalled Darwin and Da Vinci combined for their inventiveness. If Death were a science, writer James Cameron would be awarded a Nobel Prize. Stallone ventures behind enemy lines to blow up Russian whirlybirds, kill Steven Berkoff, dispense with 'gooks' by explosive-tipped rocket, and bring the boys back home. "Do We Get To Win?" Of course, Sly. Men NEVER Lose.



Manliest moment: Leaping through the jungle with a bow and arrow, blowing up ethnic people.



16. THE THING (1982)

How manly is a film that has no women in it? VERY. This 1982 sci-fi classic, set on an isolated scientific outpost in the Antarctic, sees the cast of eight males slowly decimated one by one by an unknown alien creature. Bleak, nihilist, awash with blood and guts and swimming in paranoia, The Thing is a hopeless battle against impossible odds that will, eventually, destroy the whole of mankind. The violence that bubbles under every second of the film make The Thing decidedly male. Despite being bafflingly short on deaths (with just ten), explosions (there are only two) and a complete absence of double-handed gunfights and car chases, The Thing is extraordinarily manly. Man is the warmest place to hide, not woman.



Manliest moment: "You gotta be fucking kidding!"

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