Muriel’s Wedding

In the real world tattoos are about as common as herpes, and just as permanent, with every second person you see sporting a rad rockabilly sleeve or butterfly on their left buttock. Okay, that might be getting too specific, but my point is there are a lot less tattooed people on screen. Sure, there might be an occasional ship tattooed on an arm like Captain Jack Sparrow or some gnarly eagle across the back as seen in The Expendables recently, but there are only a handful of truly awesome movie tattoos.

That’s not to say they aren’t out there, see the Polynesian-inspired tribal patterns on everyone from Wesley Snipes’ Blade to George Clooney’s Seth Gecko in From Disk Till Dawn. Yet only a small number have had their resounding bad-assness stay in the audiences mind. Here are a dozen that for various reasons I think are the best movie tattoos. Whether it’s the context of the tattoo like in Night Of The Hunter and the Ta Moko of the Maori tribes in Once Were Warriors or, more recently, just the sheer scope of the body art such as Lisbeth Salander’s dragon tattoo or Yakuza enforcer Hanzo from Predators (sorry I couldn’t find better pictures of both). Then there’s your token tough dude tattoos which perfectly represent the `don’t fuck with me’ mantra of the characters a la Romper Stomper, Eastern Promises and Chopper. Anyway, I hope you like my selections and be sure to add a few of your own in the comment section.

P.S. The Australian director behind hits such as Muriel’s Wedding, Peter Pan, Confessions Of A Shopaholic and My Best Friend’s Wedding made a surprise guest appearance at the Australian International Movie Convention last week. Filmmaker P.J. Hogan jumped on stage during the Universal Pictures presentation to talk about his latest project Mental, starring Toni Collette. Although he said he was trying to keep the details of the plot under wraps, Hogan said the film was `like The Sound Of Music on acid’. He said he was excited at being able to reunite with his favourite actor in the world – Collette. Hogan said he would return to the convention next year to screen the film.