From "Sparta!" to Greenland: Gerard Butler's 10 Best Movies, Ranked
Gerard Butler might not appear in the biggest or most celebrated movies of any given year, but his knack for consistently turning $20-50 million movies into hits (and occasionally turning B-grade scripts into prime pulp) is almost unrivalled in 21st-century cinema.
Despite his build and gruff exterior, the Scottish native has also managed to bring a lot of warmth to these kinds of movies over the years, proving himself to be that rarest of things—a rough diamond plying his trade just outside the Hollywood bubble.
With his latest, Greenland 2: Migration, currently in cinemas, it feels like a good time to look back over that fascinating career and round up the stars' ten best movies. The following list—which I’ve arranged in ascending order—covers a wide range of genres, from rom-com and animation to action spectacles, but to spread the love, I’ve restricted things to one entry per franchise—aside from one exception. Read on to discover more about Butler’s best work to date and use the guide below to find them on AppleTV, Netflix, Prime Video and elsewhere.
It might seem strange to think about today, but Butler once enjoyed a solid side-hustle as a rom-com lead. One of his earliest roles came in the Scottish indie, One More Kiss, and you can see him do his charming shtick in movies like Playing for Keeps and The Ugly Truth. For fans of the genre, however, nothing beats the schmaltz of this 2007 adaptation of Cecelia Ahern’s best-selling novel.
P.S. I Love You stars Hillary Swank as a woman who loses her husband (Butler) to cancer, only to find that he’s left her a series of tape recordings. The movie was directed by Richard LaGravenese, the writer behind classic weepies like The Horse Whisperer and The Bridges of Madison County—so you know what you’re in for.
After announcing his arrival in 300, Butler decided to try his hand at a bunch of genres (remember Gamer and Law Abiding Citizen?) before settling back into his action groove with Olympus Has Fallen. For me, this is the moment when Butler found his calling as a go-to guy for mid-level, no-nonsense action cinema—so credit where credit is due.
The movie (and its perfectly schlocky sequels, London Has Fallen and Angel Has Fallen) has one of those setups that basically asks you to imagine Die Hard in a new location. In this one, that location is no less than the White House, and the intruders are North Koreans—because sure.
If the thought of Butler playing an ex-RAF pilot (who works for a commercial airline called “Trailblazers”) who has to make an emergency landing on an island in the South China Sea while transporting a suspected killer all sounds a bit A.I.—coded (and that’s without even getting to the title), don’t let it put you off!
The simplicity of Jean-François Richet’s Plane is more of a feature than a bug. Richet, the filmmaker behind the 2005 remake of Assault on Precinct 13 and the acclaimed Mesrine films, knows how to make a lean, mean action thriller, and Plane very much fits that billing.
If you were alive and somewhat sentient in 2006, there’s a good chance you probably, at some point, spoke the phrase, “This is Sparta!” That immortal line-reading, by Butler’s King Leonidas in 300, not only inspired a feature-length spoof, but it also helped to cement Zach Snyder’s reputation (he went on to make Watchmen and Man of Steel) as one of the most audacious blockbuster filmmakers around.
With its archaic racial stereotypes and wall-to-wall digital effects, the movie has admittedly aged about as well as warm milk, but its enormous success and cultural footprint make it impossible to ignore in the actor’s career.
If you’re a fan of The Lighthouse and the great Peter Mullen (the durable Scottish star of Rings of Power and Ozark) and have yet to see The Vanishing, you’re in for a treat. This psychological thriller stars both Butler and that other durable Scottish legend as two lighthouse keepers who discover a chest of gold.
The movie was the English language feature debut of Kristoffer Nyholm, a director who started as an AD for Lars Von Trier before moving into television with the celebrated Danish crime series, The Killing.
It took seven years for Cristian Gudegast to get a Den of Thieves sequel made, but the movie was worth the wait. Relocating the action to the diamond trading districts of Nice in the South of France, a location that has always demanded at least one outrageous car chase per movie on its winding coastal roads, Gudegast followed up his sharp-edged Heat homage with a movie that felt closer in tone to Ocean’s Twelve.
Thankfully, this doesn’t mean that Butler’s “Big Nick” O’Brien has to class it up in any way. Far from it in fact: he basically turns his nose up at a croissant in the opening minutes. If Gudegast ever decides to make a third instalment, I’ll be seated.
Over his career, Butler has shown an admirable amount of loyalty to certain filmmakers. Since their first collaboration on Angel Has Fallen in 2019, Butler has already worked with the director Ric Roman Waugh on three further projects—Kandahar, Greenland and the newly released Greenland 2: Migration.
Waugh came up through the industry as a stunt performer on movies like Universal Soldier, The Last of the Mohicans and Hard Target, and while it’s hard to say if any of Michael Mann or John Woo’s style has rubbed off on him at this point, there’s certainly a good bit of Roland Emmerich’s DNA in Greenland, a wonderfully economic apocalypse flick from 2020 that does exactly what it says on the tin.
It was difficult to know which How to Train Your Dragon movie to include here. Since 2010, the actor has provided the voice of Stoick the Vast in three animated movies and even reprised the role last year in the first live-action remake. Unless the second animated movie receives the same treatment, however, I think it will remain his best work in the franchise.
Unlike the first instalment, which zoomed in on Hiccup and Toothless’ burgeoning friendship, How to Train Your Dragon 2 took a step back to tell the story of Hiccup’s family—allowing for plenty of tender and funny moments between Stoick, Hiccup and his long lost mother, Valka.
Early on in his career, Butler gave one of his finest performances in Dear Frankie, playing a man who’s hired by a widowed mother (played by Emily Mortimer) to pretend to be her son’s absent father for a day. What could possibly go wrong?
The movie premiered in Cannes in 2004 and quickly became a festival darling, introducing the world to Butler’s rugged charms in the process. If you’re a fan of offbeat and heartwarming British indies—think movies like The Angels’ Share and Billy Elliot—you’re gonna love it.
I wonder if every actor secretly dreams of landing a role like “Big Nick” O’Brein—one of the most unpredictable and potentially violent pieces of garbage we’ve seen in the last ten years of movies. In all honesty, he’s objectively detestable, but thanks to Butler’s sheer gravitational pull, you simply can’t take your eyes off of him.
Butler’s first portrayal of the character, in Gudegast’s first Den of Thieves movie, is still the best and, IMO, the best thing the actor has done—he’s just so raw and unhinged in this movie, it’s genuinely hard to know what he’s going to do next. Place that kind of character in a delicately-tuned heist movie (one that borrows from and pays homage to classics like Heat and Point Break in equal measure), and the results can be lethally entertaining—as they very much are here.
