Written by Old Bluffer 23rd Jul 2006

Darrius Sayle is a rather strange evil genius, in that he isn't interested in taking over the world, or even destroying it - he just wants to kill thousands of English schoolchildren in revenge for being bullied at school by the boy who would one day go on to become the UK prime minister.
His plan to achieve this rather unfair slaughter is undeniably ridiculous, involving donating supercomputers laced with a deadly virus (biological, not the kind that just deletes all your email) to every school in the country, and then getting the prime minister (Robbie Coltrane) to remotely activate all of them in a public opening ceremony.
The supercomputer name is of course the "Stormbreaker", and does actually function as a reasonably advanced virtual reality simulator to educate kids about dinosaurs and space. If it were me, I would have just slapped a futuristic box together and installed Linux, but Darrius doesn't do things by halves, and has clearly invested billions on his dastardly vision.

By the time of his demise though, his plans have been predictably thwarted by his teenage nemesis, Alex Rider.
He has to fall back on Plan B then, involving going to the roof of his own tower (like most self respecting villains, he has a tower named after him) and manually sending the virus activation signal to all the stormbreakers.
He probably wished he'd just wired the signal to his mobile phone or something though, because by the time he makes his way through London traffic, Alex and his girlfriend have already beaten him to it (they took a horse, which most foreign tourists still don't realise is the fastest way to beat the rush hour).
Alex has therefore had time to sabotage the transmitter by the clever means of unplugging the cable, and all Darrius can do is try and threaten him at gunpoint to give it back.
This obviously isn't going to happen, and after a brief scuffle, Alex and his girl are left dangling precariously from the cable.
Darrius downscales his projected deathtoll to just two schoolchildren at this point, and draws aim with his gun...

...only to be shot himself by his ally, Yassen Gregorovich.

A moment should be taken to explain that Gregorovich has a signature move in this film, whereby he dangles upsidedown from a helicopter until he is level with his victim, and then shoots them with his dual handguns. He has already killed Alex's uncle, Ian Rider (Ewan McGregor) (q.v.) in this exact manner at the start of the film. This is quite an impressive signature move, as obviously you need a helicopter, a helicopter pilot, the victim needs to be in a suitable location - well, you get the idea, Gregorovich clearly has fantastic organisational skills.

Anyway, Darrius is shot at the top of a tower, and of course has to keel over the edge and fall to his doom. To complete his acrobatic achievements of the day, Gregorovich then proceeds to save Alex's life, by offering him his (upsidedown) hand, moments before the cable snaps.

This rather cliched ending received a slightly higher score thanks to the twist that Gregorovich killed him, and then went on to give Alex the dilemma of having to be rescued by the man who killed his uncle (setting things up nicely for the sequel).