5 Great Movie Monologues

"So that was Mrs. Lundegaard on the floor in there. And I guess that was your accomplice in the wood chipper. And those three people in Brainerd. And for what? For a little bit of money. There's more to life than a little money, you know. Don't you know that? And here you are - and it's a beautiful day. Well, I just don't understand it."

Fargo (1996)
Frances McDormand as Marge Gunderson
Screenplay by Joel and Ethan Coen
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"Mike? What's the pool on me up to right now? What's it up to? What is it, 300 dollars? Is that it? 300? I'm a school teacher. I teach English Composition in this little town called Addley, Pennsylvania. The last 11 years, I've been at Thomas Alva Edison High School. I was coach of the baseball team in the spring time. Back home when I tell people what I do for a living, they think, well, that, that figures. But over here it's a big, a big mystery. So I guess I've changed some. Sometimes I wonder if I've changed so much my wife is even gonna recognize me whenever it is I get back to her - and how I'll ever be able to tell her about days like today. Ryan - I don't know anything about Ryan. I don't care. Man means nothin' to me. It's just a name. But if - you know - if going to Ramelle and finding him so he can go home, if that earns me the right to get back to my wife - well, then, then that's my mission. You wanna leave? You wanna go off and fight the war? All right. All right, I won't stop you. I'll even put in the paperwork. I just know that every man I kill, the farther away from home I feel."

Saving Private Ryan (1998)
Tom Hanks as Captain John Miller
Screenplay by Robert Rodat


“You pay me to go get guys like Wigand, to draw him out, to get him to trust us, to get him to go on television. I do. I deliver him. He sits. He talks. He violates his own f@cking confidentiality agreement. And he’s only the key witness in the biggest public health reform issue, maybe the biggest, most expensive corporate malfeasance case in U.S. history. And Jeffrey Wigand, who’s out on a limb, does he go on television and tell the truth? Yes. Is it newsworthy? Yes. Are we gonna air it? Of course not. Why? Because he’s not telling the truth? No, because he is telling the truth. That’s why we’re not going to air it. And the more truth he tells, the worse it gets.”

The Insider (1999)
Al Pacino as Lowell Bergman
Screenplay by Eric Roth and Michael Mann


"You're so ambitious, aren't you? You know what you look like to me, with your good bag and your cheap shoes? You look like a rube, a well-scrubbed, hustling rube, with a little taste. Good nutrition's given you some length of bone, but you're not more than one generation from poor white trash, are you, Agent Starling? And that accent you've tried so desperately to shed - pure West Virginia. What does your father do? Is he a coal miner? Does he stink of the lamp? You know how quickly the boys found you. All those tedious, sticky fumblings in the back seats of cars, while you could only dream of getting out, getting anywhere, getting all the way to the F...B...I.”

The Silence of the Lambs (1991)
Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal Lecter
Screenplay by Ted Tally


“You have meddled with the primal forces of nature, Mr. Beale, and I won't have it, is that clear? You think you have merely stopped a business deal - that is not the case! The Arabs have taken billions of dollars out of this country, and now they must put it back. It is ebb and flow, tidal gravity, it is ecological balance. You are an old man who thinks in terms of nations and peoples. There are no nations! There are no peoples! There are no Russians! There are no Arabs! There are no Third Worlds! There is no West! There is only one holistic system of systems, one vast and immane, interwoven, interacting, multi-variate, multi-national dominion of dollars! Petro-dollars, electro-dollars, multi-dollars, reichmarks, rins, rubles, pounds and shekels! It is the international system of currency which determines the totality of life on this planet. That is the natural order of things today. That is the atomic, and subatomic and galactic structure of things today. And you have meddled with the primal forces of nature, and you will atone! Am I getting through to you, Mr. Beale? You get up on your little twenty-one inch screen and howl about America and democracy. There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM, and ITT, and AT & T, and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide, and Exxon - those are the nations of the world today. What do you think the Russians talk about in their councils of state - Karl Marx? They get out their linear programming charts, statistical decision theories and mini-max solutions and compute the price-cost probabilities of their transactions and investments just like we do. We no longer live in a world of nations and ideologies, Mr. Beale. The world is a college of corporations, inexorably determined by the immutable by-laws of business. The world is a business, Mr. Beale. It has been since man crawled out of the slime, and our children will live, Mr. Beale, to see that perfect world in which there's no war or famine, oppression or brutality. One vast and ecumenical holding company, for whom all men will work to serve a common profit, in which all men will hold a share of stock, all necessities provided, all anxieties tranquilized, all boredom amused. And I have chosen you to preach this evangel, Mr. Beale."

Network (1976)
Ned Beatty as Arthur Jensen
Screenplay by Paddy Chayefsky