Every Tom Hardy Movie, Ranked Worst To Best

Since making his big screen debut in Black Hawk Down, Tom Hardy has built a career as a versatile leading man, working with many of the best directors in the business. Hardy first made a name for himself in HBO’s war drama Band of Brothers. Like many of the stars of that show, he has since gone on to bigger and better things. Hardy steadily built a career as a supporting actor before establishing himself as a leading man with hits such as Bronson and Warrior. With the success of a few big-budget blockbusters, including Inception, Hardy quickly became a star.

Tom Hardy is a versatile performer known for making bold choices. Even his most divisive performances show more creativity and flair than most other actors ever dare to muster. That isn’t to say that he isn’t capable of acing subtler dramatic roles. His performances in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and Locke show that he has the fundamentals to back up his splashier roles. Hardy has starred in action blockbusters, crime dramas and much more. The one constant across his entire career has been his dedication to creating immersive, believable characters.

35 LD 50 Lethal Dose (2003)

Matt

LD 50 Lethal Dose is a low-budget horror movie about a group of animal rights activists who break into a remote laboratory to free one of their imprisoned comrades. Although he had already been in a few high-profile projects, including Black Hawk Down and Band of Brothers, Tom Hardy isn’t given much to do. He blends in with the rest of the group in this schlocky horror movie, which suffers from an uninteresting plot and a dependence on nonsensical sci-fi mumbo jumbo. Tom Hardy will likely never appear in a worse movie for the rest of his career.

34 Minotaur (2006)

Theo

Minotaur is a loose adaptation of the Greek myth of Theseus. This story has lasted for millennia, but Minotaur manages to make it feel like a dreary slog. Minotaur could have had the making of an interesting horror movie if it had dared to stray further from the tired formula of historical dramas. Ultimately, Minotaur takes itself too seriously, and its alterations to the original myth strip the legend of its meaning. It’s a low-budget TV movie that takes a well-known story and butchers it for no discernible reason, but it also doesn’t have enough originality to enter so-bad-it’s-good territory.

33 Flood (2007)

Zak

Flood is a paint-by-numbers disaster movie, but it doesn’t feature anything as cinematic as a plane crash or a volcanic eruption. Instead, the threat facing London is a big, although not biblical, flood. From this lame starting point, Flood hits all the disaster movie clichés, such as the politicians squabbling in a crisis room and rescue workers battling their personal shortcomings to get people to safety. The stakes are relatively low, and the special effects are utterly underwhelming, both of which help make Flood a generic and forgettable flop.

32 Sucker Punch (2008)

Rodders

Tom Hardy looks out of place in Sucker Punch, a movie that looks cheap and lacks any real filmmaking guile. He only has a minor role to play, and perhaps Sucker Punch would be more interesting with him as the star. The story follows a fighter who wants revenge after a humiliating defeat, but there isn’t enough going on outside the ring for Sucker Punch to stay interesting. The film’s one saving grace is that the fight scenes are often genuinely compelling. There are no camera tricks or sleight of hand, just stunt performers putting on a show.

31 EMR (2004)

Henry

EMR is another one of Tom Hardy’s early-career movies that would have benefited from giving him a bigger part to play. The story weaves together a few urban legends, such as kidney harvesting and secret psychotropic drug experiments, and they are all filtered through the skeptical worldview of a protagonist who spends his days reading about conspiracy theories. Not all the twists deliver a decent payoff, but EMR has a creative approach to its subject. With a little more intelligence and some more interesting visuals, EMR could have been an indie gem, rather than a merely passable drama.

30 Deserter (2002)

Pascal Dupont

Deserter is based on the true story of Simon Murray, who also helped write the script. Murray joins the French Foreign Legion filled with youthful idealism, but his illusions are soon shattered when he meets his fellow recruits, who have less noble reasons for signing up. Tom Hardy plays Pascal Dupont, the man who best typifies the self-serving, cynical worldview of some soldiers. Deserter isn’t the greatest war movie, but it does benefit from Simon Murray’s real-life experiences, particularly with the brutal scenes of the training camp.

29 Child 44 (2015)

Leo Demidov

Child 44 is based on the novel by Tom Rob Smith, which itself was inspired by the haunting case of Andrei Chikatilo, the most notorious serial killer in the Soviet Union. Tom Hardy brings a potent mix of surly menace and suppressed emotion to the role of Leo Demidov, a hero from the Second World War who finds himself in the 1950s as a security agent on the trail of a killer. Child 44 fails to deliver on its fascinating premise, and the conflict between Demidov and the state never truly boils over in the way it threatens to. Its ponderous pace made it a box office bomb.

28 The Killing Gene (2007)

Pierre Jackson

The Killing Gene is a detective thriller in the same vein as David Fincher’s Se7en, but it also seems to take inspiration from Saw. Ultimately, it isn’t as effective as either of these movies. What The Killing Gene does well is deliver plenty of nauseating torture scenes, coupled with an investigation into human nature. The philosophical themes are a little lightweight in the end, as The Killing Gene focuses more on engendering an unsettling atmosphere. Its cast is more than capable of achieving this, especially Stellan Skarsgård who retreads familiar territory as a world-weary detective.

27 Thick As Thieves (2009)

Michaels

Thick as Thieves, also known as The Code, is a heist drama that sticks to every trope in the book. The thieves even task themselves with stealing Fabergé eggs, a particular treasure which appears so frequently in crime dramas and cartoons that one would think they are vital to global trade in some way. Morgan Freeman does what he can to bring some gravitas to the drama, but he can only do so much to put some new luster on a collection of old ideas and unnecessary twists. There is just enough quality on show to make Thick as Thieves seem competent, but it isn’t breaking any new ground.

26 The Reckoning (2003)

Straw

Tom Hardy plays one of his most unusual roles in The Reckoning. He’s part of a merry traveling theater troupe in the 14th century who decide to use their relative impunity to present an alternative story of events when a woman is sentenced to death. Hardy is the troupe’s crossdressing performer, who delights in daintily applying makeup before strutting sensually around the stage. His character and the period setting make The Reckoning feel like William Shakespeare’s version of a murder mystery, although that isn’t to say that the script is up to his standards.

25 This Means War (2012)

Tuck

This Means War marks a departure for Tom Hardy, who isn’t often the type to star in romantic comedies. He and Chris Pine play two spies who compete for the attention of the same woman, played by Reese Witherspoon. There are a few laughs as they use their high-tech spy equipment to belittle and frustrate each other like children with expensive toys, but much of the comedy falls flat. Hardy does a passable job, but this style of comedy isn’t his greatest asset. He’s often much funnier in movies which don’t try so hard, when he can elicit a laugh with his deadpan expressions.

24 Capone (2020)

Al Capone

Tom Hardy’s Al Capone biopic could have been a big moment for him, but a mediocre script hinders the movie’s potential. Hardy is a captivating watch as an aging version of the notorious mobster. He swaggers about with a commanding presence, and the story provides just enough of his backstory to illustrate the gulf between his horrific crimes and his current fractured mental state. As a character study, Capone doesn’t dig deep enough into the life of America’s most infamous mobster, nor does it answer any of the mysteries about his life.

23 Scenes Of A Sexual Nature (2006)

Noel

Scenes of a Sexual Nature follows a few loosely related couples on an afternoon in a London park, which almost makes it feel like a comedy anthology movie at times. The more appropriate comparison is probably Love Actually, but while the Richard Curtis movie is now remembered as a classic British romcom, Scenes of a Sexual Nature has been largely forgotten. Tom Hardy plays a young man who drifts around the park trying to hit on any woman that will listen to him for more than two seconds, even if she’s with her partner. His story is uninteresting, but some of Hardy’s line deliveries are still worth a chuckle.

22 Star Trek: Nemesis (2002)

Shinzon

Star Trek: Nemesis is arguably the worst Star Trek movie of all time, and it dented the franchise’s credibility until J.J. Abrams’ 2009 reboot. The dull narrative swings between rehashing old material and sending the crew of the Enterprise off on absurd adventures in desperate search of a memorable action sequence. Tom Hardy is one of the film’s redeeming qualities. His villain Shinzon isn’t as well-developed as Star Trek‘s greatest characters, but Hardy brings an unsettling presence to the role which suits the character well. Unfortunately, the movie’s box office failure was a step back in Hardy’s fledgling career.

21 London Road (2015)

Mark

London Road is an experimental musical based on the true story of an insular neighborhood in Ipswich, England, when the residents discovered that a serial killer was living in their midst. Based on the stage production of the same name, London Road is a verbatim musical which derives its lyrics from interviews with people who lived in the area. Similarly, the tone and rhythm of the interviews are often put directly into the songs. London Road is an interesting movie for anyone with an interest in the structures and functions of musicals, but more casual fans may find its style to be off-putting and potentially insensitive.

20 Dot The I (2003)

Tom

Dot the I sets up an interesting love triangle in its first act before shattering every one of the audience’s assumptions into a thousand pieces. The third act is a dizzying procession of twists. About half of these twists make logical sense, and perhaps fewer make any sort of emotional sense. Still, Dot the I is a lot of fun, even if it is more of a puzzle than an earnest narrative. Tom Hardy has a minor role as the friend of one of the men in the love triangle. He’s a stock character for any romance drama, but his presence could just be another way for the film to set its traps.

19 Venom (2018)

Eddie Brock/ Venom

Tom Hardy developed the voice of Venom from an eclectic milieu of influences including Busta Rhymes and James Brown, but he puts his spin on it with plenty of bassy, guttural growls. The voice is symbolic of Hardy’s entire performance as Venom, which sees him at his most playful and charming. He’s likable and sympathetic, which adds a layer of horror as Eddie Brock slowly succumbs to the alien symbiote taking over his body. The action scenes in Venom are a slight letdown, especially when compared to other Spider-Man movies or the MCU, but Hardy’s performance carries the movie just enough.

18 Marie Antoinette (2006)

Raumont

Sofia Coppola’s stylisti approach to the story of Marie Antoinette raised more than a few eyebrows when it was first released, but it has since been reappraised and achieved the status of a cult classic. Rather than sticking to the established template of other costume dramas, Marie Antoinette features modern slang, pop music and one notorious shot of a pair of sneakers to draw parallels between the excesses of the French nobility before the Revolution and modern consumer culture. This modernization also has the effect of bringing a new dimension to the tragedy of Marie Antoinette’s death.

17 Venom: Let There Be Carnage (2021)

Eddie Brock/ Venom

Tom Hardy’s second outing as Eddie Brock was a slight improvement on the first. Venom: Let There Be Carnage is a rare highlight of the Sony Spider-Man universe movies, although it doesn’t exactly face stiff competition from Madame Web and Morbius. Let There Be Carnage has a smoother pace than its predecessor, as well as some more varied action sequences. The big positive, however, is Woody Harrelson’s performance opposite Tom Hardy as a serial killer who becomes infected with a symbiote of his own. Harrelson always seems to enjoy himself more as a wildcard, and he complements Hardy’s style perfectly.

16 Legend (2015)

Ronnie and Reggie Kray

Tom Hardy puts in a double shift in Legend as both of London’s most notorious gangsters. At the height of their fame, the Kray twins featured prominently in the tabloids just like any other celebrities, but they made their money through protection rackets, illegal gambling and armed robbery. It takes a special kind of talent to pull off a dual role in a movie, but Hardy plays off himself wonderfully, and he manages to craft each twin’s personality with an equal amount of care. Legend has plenty of comedic moments which highlight the absurdity of the way that the Kray twins were fawned over by the media.