7) Django Unchained
In Django Unchained, which features Leo’s one and only strictly ‘bad guy’ role, DiCaprio doesn’t just tiptoe into the waters of villainy: he fully submerges himself. Calvin Candie, the effete plantation owner, slaver and antagonist to the heroes of Quentin Tarantino’s western, is a man content with being a bloodthirsty devil. He’s strictly irredeemable.
Putting any ego aside, DiCaprio rejects any semblance of nice guy-ness to take on Candie. He plays it gleefully wicked, clearly having fun indulging his nasty side and crafting a memorable baddie under the guidance of Tarantino. The part borders on the cartoonish, but DiCaprio makes Candie believable enough to be effectively terrifying.
6) The Basketball Diaries
Before DiCaprio became a mega-star post-Titanic, he was making a solid go at a more indie-based career path, starring in darker dramatic fare like The Basketball Diaries. Scott Kalvert’s movie is about a New York City kid, DiCaprio’s Jim, curtailing his dreams of becoming a basketball star by entering a world of drugs and crime. A feelgood film it isn’t.
What saves it from becoming a monotonous misery-fest is an electric DiCaprio, thrilling to watch even in the film’s most harrowing moments. It’s a surprisingly rough and raw turn, and a shockingly realistic depiction of a person in the throes of addiction. The scene in which Jim asks his estranged mother for money, before quickly turning aggressive in his heroin haze, remains one of DiCaprio’s most powerful moments.
