21 THE USUAL SUSPECTS 1995 Even more than Tarantino's stuff, Chris McQuarrie's Oscar-winning script for this Rubik's cube of a caper movie is about guys who live to riff on flavorful tough-guy clichés. Repeated viewings, even once you know who Keyser Soze is, can't dim the film's layered luster. Key Scene The lineup. It's all there if you know what to look for. Best Line "The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist."
22 BLAZING SADDLES 1974 Every Mel Brooks movie works better on home video than it does in theaters because (like all the Airplane movies) they're really just anthologies of hilarious but dumb gags loosely strung together. Saddles, then, is a classic guy movie by default, because you can drink and talk and even doze off while watching it and you'll still have a great time. Key Scene Beans, beans, the musical fruit. Best Line "Excuse me while I whip this out."
23 THE WILD BUNCH 1969 Outlaws run bloodily amok in war-torn Mexico in 1914, the west's final frontier. "I was trying to tell a simple story about bad men in changing times," said director Sam Peckinpah. "The strange thing is that you feel a great sense of loss when these killers reach the end of the line." The ultraviolent finale is a balletic mass suicide as William Holden and his bunch snatch glorious defeat from the jaws of meaningless victory. Key Scene The final, orgiastic bloodbath. Best Line "If they move, kill 'em."
24 THE MALTESE FALCON 1941 Few other movies of this vintage have aged as well. With the edge of sadistic menace that Humphrey Bogart brings to the role of private eye Sam Spade, and the staccato crispness of director John Huston's pacing, the movie still feels bracingly modern. Its cynicism stings no matter how many times you watch it. Key Scene Spade's true viciousness emerges in his bullying of the sniveling Wilmer (Elisha Cook Jr.). Best Line "When you're slapped you'll take it and like it."
25 UNFORGIVEN 1992 There have been plenty of "revisionist" westerns over the years, but Unforgiven is the last one we'll ever need. Clint Eastwood pulls the rug out from under every romantic myth of the Old West. His perpetually disgusted hero is a retired gunfighter who has come to realize that killing is an ugly, irreversible act. Key Scene The messy, bloody gunfight with corrupt lawman Bill Daggett (Gene Hackman). Best Line "Hell of a thing, killing a man. You take away all he's got and all he's ever gonna have."
26 THE SEVEN SAMURAI 1954 The most influential action film of all time was made in Japan by Akira Kurosawa almost 50 years ago -- yet the western remake, The Magnificent Seven, is still more familiar here than the indelible original. A band of outcast warriors (including Toshiro Mifune) defends a peasant village against a gang of bandits. Key Scene The battle in the rain, the most electrifying action sequence ever filmed. Best Line "The farmers have won, not us."
27 DINER 1982 Screenwriter Barry Levinson made his directorial debut with this autobiographical comedy set in Baltimore in 1959, and it's one of the smartest films ever made about guys growing up together. It's a male bonding film that doesn't simply glorify arrested adolescence, it recognizes the necessity of wising up and moving on. The film's great cast of future notables includes Kevin Bacon, Paul Reiser, and Mickey Rourke -- as a hipster in his own mind, the role he's been playing ever since in real life. Key Scene The football quiz. Best Line "You gonna finish that?"
28 THE BIG LEBOWSKI 1998 This cult comedy -- about getting in touch with your inner slacker -- is revered as a quasi-religious text by fans. Jeff Bridges is sublime as the Dude, a laid-back stoner who crisscrosses L.A. in search of bowling partners, nihilists, a kidnapped nympho, and a new rug. Not the Coen brothers' best film, but their best guy film. Key Scene Nihilists attack the Dude by throwing a live marmot into his bathtub. Best Line "That rug really tied the room together."
29 SHAFT 1971 As in so many private-eye stories the plot (what there is of it) is much less important than the grotty urban settings and the detective's pugnacious swagger. Richard Roundtree's John Shaft is an iconic presence in black leather, more than cool enough to deserve Isaac Hayes's Oscar-winning theme song, which kerchunks along relentlessly on the soundtrack. Key Scene Every sequence featuring Moses Gunn as Bumpy Jonas, the gravel-voiced Harlem gang lord. Best Line "Don't let your mouth get your ass in trouble."
30 48 HRS 1982 Walter Hill's two-fisted action comedy set the pattern for all the facetious odd-couple buddy pictures of the past two decades. But we never held that against it. Nick Nolte's growly, grizzled, burned-out cop next to Eddie Murphy's preening slickster in his mothballed suit (he's a con on a two-day "work release" to help catch his former partner) are vivid characters who strike flinty sparks off each other. We're still keeping our fingers crossed for a director's cut DVD that restores Annette O'Toole's snipped shower scene. Key Scene Murphy takes over a redneck bar (and the movie) armed with only an empty gun and some major attitude. Best Line "I'm your worst fuckin' nightmare, man: a nigger with a badge."