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If being tough were a prerequisite for membership in a criminal enterprise, there would be no need for guns; disputes would be settled in arm-wrestling matches or perhaps in a few rounds of roshambo. That, however, is not the way: while gangs tend to keep around a few big burly dudes -- for appearances' sake -- no crew is complete without some skinny, whiny little sissy. You know, the guy who only got onto the crew because of his tougher grandfather or uncle. Kids get spoiled growing up with inherited wealth, whether your forebears were robber barons or just regular robbers. So crooks' spawn, like all fictional rich brats, end up lazy, soft, ineffective, and decadent, easily taken in by such stings as a condom on a cigarette pack in a seedy gay bar. Yes, Frankie Flowers, we're talking about you.

Clifton Collins Jr.'s performance in Traffic, as Francisco "Frankie Flowers" Flores, probably didn't put him in the running for any GLAAD awards, and not just because of the poor, wispy quality of his bad teenage moustache. Frankie's attraction to men is the very means the cops use to get his attention...and then before you know it, he's in some tiny pen in a secret Mexican prison, getting tortured over his participation in a drug cartel. Maybe they release him back into the population because they think they've broken him -- but here's where Frankie really does his people (both criminals and gays) proud: he gets right back on the horse, accepting a job killing fellow H!ITG! Miguel Ferrer (although he misses his first shot and kills Luiz Guzmān instead). Now that's a pro, yo.

Collins -- currently in Gregg Araki's latest pretension-athon, Mysterious Skin -- has further proved his facility for portraying criminals in such films as The Last Castle and The Hillside Strangler, but we'll always associate him most with Frankie Flowers -- not too busy getting tortured and mutilated to take a moment and brag about his stereo.