The Top Ten Action Heroes Who Deserve A Comeback, Part 2

Peter Smith — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 14:00:00 GMT

5. Alan "Dutch" Schaefer (Arnold Schwarzenegger), Predator

When it comes to sheer coolness, few action movies can top John McTiernan's Predator. The uncomplicated tale of a Special Forces unit being stalked by an alien trophy hunter has little time to waste on anything that doesn't involve an explosion. Though the Predators themselves have returned to the screen several times (most recently in this year's Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem), Dutch Schaefer has yet to be granted a rematch with the beasts. The role of the wisecracking soldier who transforms into an instinct-driven animal is one of the roles that put Arnold Schwarzenegger on the map. The sooner his political career ends, the sooner Arnold can get back to doing what he does best — punching extraterrestrials in the face.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NoRHcyf3lv0

4. Snake Plissken (Kurt Russell), Escape from New York

John Carpenter's Escape From New York is set in a bleak near-future in which Manhattan is a prison colony. The film is a bare-bones affair with little budget for flashy set-pieces, which may be why the film's fans feel so much affection for megacool antihero Snake Plissken. In 1980, Kurt Russell was best known for Disney's The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes, and his portrayal of the grim Plissken changed the trajectory of his entire career. The 1995 remaquel Escape From LA is oft-mocked, but it's both more showy and more fun. Its conclusion follows the nihilism of the bad-guy action hero to its furthest extreme: Plissken single-handedly destroys civilization and plunges the world back to the Stone Age. It's a great setup for further adventures in an even wilder setting, and with Russell riding a wave of newfound respect after Grindhouse, the time is ripe for Plissken to return.

3. William Bonney/Billy the Kid (Emilio Estevez), Young Guns

Jack Torrance and Hannibal Lecter are certainly great screen maniacs, but for my money, one of the greatest psychopaths in film history is Emilio Estevez's Billy the Kid. In this flashy revisionist western, Billy turns a gang of would-be heroes into a group of coldblooded killers. He takes obvious glee in bloodshed, often toying with his victims before pulling the trigger. His stated reason for killing his first victim: "He was hackin' on me." The framing sequence of Young Guns 2 reveals that Billy survived well into the twentieth century, so there's plenty of room for continuing adventures.

2. Casey Ryback (Steven Seagal), Under Siege

For a brief period in the early '90s, Steven Seagal was the king of the action flick. In 1992, following a string of generically-titled bloodbaths, he made the best film of his career: Under Siege. Much of the film's charm comes from its over-the-top villains, portrayed by Gary Busey and Tommy Lee Jones, whose scheme to hijack a soon-to-be-decommissioned battleship comes straight from the Bond villain playbook. But the film's real strength is Steven Seagal's ebullient performance as Casey Ryback, a demoted Navy SEAL serving out his term as a cook — "a lowly, lowly cook." Ryback is calm about the hijacked ship; he only gets really angry when Busey insults his cooking. Seagal's films never stopped being fun, but he's never had another character anywhere near as entertaining as Ryback.

1. Harry Callahan (Clint Eastwood), Dirty Harry

With Dirty Harry, Don Siegel created the standard by which action films would be judged for decades to come. The film's story of a copy whose hunt for a serial killer is hampered by red tape and the Bill of Rights led to four sequels and a legion of imitators. Subsequent action heroes owe a lot to Harry, from Kurt Russell and Steven Seagal's gruff whispers to Axel Foley and Popeye Doyle's refusal to play by the rules. In the years since The Dead Pool, the fifth and final Dirty Harry film, Clint Eastwood has gained a reputation for both sophistication and simplicity, both as an actor and a director. A return to the character of Callahan would almost certainly become a meditation of the nature of violence and the lingering ghosts of past carnage. But it would also be fucking awesome. There are rumors that Eastwood has retired from acting, but for the sake of action films past, present, and future, Dirty Harry deserves a swansong.

Read PART 1.

The Top Ten Action Heroes Who Deserve A Comeback, Part 1

Peter Smith — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 22:30:00 GMT

This week's top ten comes to us from guest writer Gabriel Mckee, friend of Nerve and author of The Gospel According to Science Fiction. Read his fantastic blog here.

Recent years may well be remembered for bringing back the over-the-top action hero. New sequels to Rocky, Die Hard, and Rambo have revived long-dead franchises, and the trend is continuing. Indiana Jones 4 has started filming, and a fourth Mad Max film would have wrapped by now had scheduling conflicts not led director George Miller to make Happy Feet instead. Though it's an easy trend to mock, it opens the door for other action heroes to be resurrected — here are some top candidates.

10. Scott McCoy (Chuck Norris), The Delta Force

Before he was a meme, before he was Walker, Texas Ranger, even before he was a Karate Kommando, Chuck Norris was Maj. Scott McCoy of the Delta Force. This elite antiterrorist strike force, led by Lee Marvin, consists of some thirty soldiers who are highly trained in standing around in the back of a cargo plane while Chuck Norris rides around on a motorcycle killing terrorists. Delta Force came out in the pre-Die Hard world, before we expected our action heroes to have pathos, depth or family troubles. There's not much character to this character, but when it comes to straightforward ass-kicking, Norris is the undisputed master. Norris is ripe for a Stallone-style comeback, and in the and in the age of the War on Terror, a new entry in the Delta Force saga is the perfect vehicle for his revival.

9. Axel Foley (Eddie Murphy), Beverly Hills Cop

Remember when Eddie Murphy made movies that people enjoyed? Barring Dreamgirls, his film career has been on a losing streak for over a decade, putting him just below Robin Williams on the list of actors who need to be rescued from their own careers. A return to the role of Axel Foley, the detective/con man of Beverly Hills Cop, might be the best way to ensure that Norbit never happens again.

8. Jack Carter (Michael Caine), Get Carter

Michael Caine has made a major comeback in recent years, but in most of his recent roles — in Batman Begins, Children of Men,and The Prestige, for instance — he's played the Kindly Old British Guy. It's easy to forget that he made his name playing jerks — first a heartless cad in Alfie, then a brutal-but-suave thug in Get Carter. This story of a London gangster who travels to Newcastle (Britain's equivalent of South Jersey) to investigate his brother's murder isn't as flashy as more recent tales of the U.K. underworld. But Guy Ritchie and Jason Statham nevertheless owe everything to Get Carter's blueprint and Caine's cynical performance. A return to the character of Carter would give Caine a chance to recapture both the grim violence and the effortless sexiness of one of his greatest roles.

7. Jimmy "Popeye" Doyle (Gene Hackman), The French Connection

The most successful action film of the '70s didn't star Clint Eastwood, Bruce Lee or any other established veteran of the genre. The French Connection owes much of its success to Gene Hackman's performance as hot-headed bad cop Popeye Doyle (which earned him his first Academy Award). More than just a tough guy, Doyle is a contemptible bully, and instead of an invincible supercop, his temper makes him a bit of a screw-up. Hackman is still more than capable of this kind of complexity (as proven by The Royal Tenenbaums), and it would be thrilling to see what he could do with this character after thirty-five years.

6. Foxy Brown (Pam Grier)

The 1973 film Coffy established Pam Grier as the undisputed queen of '70s blaxploitation. Foxy Brown (originally intended as a sequel entitled Burn, Coffy, Burn!) justified her ascension — whether infiltrating a high-end call-girl ring, shooting her drug-dealing brother in the ear, or hijacking a drug runner's crop duster, Foxy is "a whole lotta woman." At turns smiling and sneering, she violently opposes an oppressive society symbolized by a white-operated heroin syndicate. Grier has had a slightly higher profile since Quentin Tarantino reintroduced audiences to her charms, but it's been far too long since she's kicked ass like she did in Foxy Brown.

Read PART 2.

The Screengrab : gabriel mckee

The Top Ten Action Heroes Who Deserve A Comeback, Part 2

The Top Ten Action Heroes Who Deserve A Comeback, Part 1