Best Slow Mo Kills

World War II movies are fertile ground for slow-motion death, as the massive sacrifice of humanity made for some pretty dramatic moments. In the HBO miniseries The Pacific, we're treated to a number of these, but the most intense is the death of Gunnery Sergeant John Basilone at Iwo Jima. As his Marine regiment storms the beach, they're met by a hail of gunfire, and a bullet rips right through Basilone's chest. Easily one of the best slow mo kills of all time.

Ridley Scott's Blade Runner has no shortage of stylish scenes, but one of the most memorable is when Deckard takes out the replicant Zhora, shooting her in the back and letting her body crash through a plate-glass window. What would be a chaotic and horrible moment turns into something balletic and beautiful, making it one of the best slow mo kills ever.

Let's head into the jungle with Oliver Stone's classic Vietnam flick Platoon. The slow mo death in this movie comes at the expense of Sgt. Elias, played memorably by Willem Dafoe. It wasn't the Viet Cong that took him out, though - it was his own damn side. After Elias observes Sgt. Barnes killing non-combatants and violating the Geneva Convention, it sets off a sequence of events that ends with Barnes putting a bullet in his head. Not cool, man.

Zack Snyder's Watchmen was kind of a mess that missed the point of the original graphic novel, but the big-screen portrayal of the Comedian's death was pretty well-executed. As an unseen assailant breaks into the state-sanctioned vigilante's apartment and brutally beats him, we shift into slow motion to watch as he's violently ejected out of a window to splatter on the sidewalk below. If I were falling out of a building, I'd want to fall out of a building in slow mo.