Title: The Last Action Heroes
Rating: 4 Stars
It’s the late 1970s. Our country is still recovering from the turbulent 1960s, our ignominious withdrawal from Vietnam that shook our faith as a superpower, and the Watergate scandal that destroyed our trust in politicians.
The 1970s featured the visionary auteur showing us the corruption of our time. Think of Scorsese and Taxi Driver. Think of Coppola and Godfather Part II. Or Cimino’s Deer Hunter.
What were we to do? Well, clearly it was time to elect Ronald Reagan as our cowboy President and for American films to start waving that flag and to start killing people.
The Last Action Heroes is about that interesting time. Apparently we had our fill of carefully made, smaller, independent films and we wanted explosions starring indestructible men with large muscles.
Since I was a teenager in 1980, I was smack dab in the middle of all of that. Of course, the two polar stars of this time were Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger. The book doesn’t stop there. It also includes profiles of Chuck Norris, Jackie Chan, Dolph Lundgren, Bruce Willis, Steven Seagal, and Jean-Claude Van Damme.
It really started with Stallone and Rocky in 1976 and Rocky II in 1979. The story of a maligned, underestimated palooka boxer who, when unexpectedly given a chance, makes the most of it and electrifies the world was exactly the kind of film that American needed to get it out of its doldrums.
Stallone flailed trying to build a career that was not Rocky. When he finally broke through with the Rambo films, First Blood in 1982 and Rambo: First Blood Part II in 1985, he became the movie star hero that Reagan America demanded.
Apparently America wanted even larger men. Arnold Schwarzenegger definitely fit that bill. He burst onto the scene with the Conan films The Barbarian in 1982 and The Destroyer in 1985. Sandwiched between those two was the role that he was born to play, The Terminator.
At that point, the fight for alpha dog was on. It was an interesting battle. The book paints Stallone as painfully insecure. He wants people to see him as a creative, intellectual artist and not just the meatball Rocky or the brutal Rambo. Unfortunately, his choice of films left much to be desired. Films like Rhinestone, Tango & Cash, Cobra, and the infamous Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot proved that he was limited, especially when it came to comedy. With a few exceptions, Rocky and Rambo was going to be his path to greatness.
Schwarzenegger, on the other hand, had a nice run of films. Not only the awesome Terminator 2, but there was also Commando, Predator, Running Man, Twins, Total Recall, and Kindergarten Cop. These were all giant hits. I remember seeing all of them in the theater. Interesting, Schwarzenegger is portrayed as so self-confident that he appears to be almost free of ego. To improve himself, he willingly took direction, observed other actors, and was willing to risk failure and rejection in his quest to be the king of film. This willing to take risks might have been one of the reasons why he was able to succeed at comedy when so many of his fellow action hero peers failed.
Proving that, in Hollywood, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, several others became, with various levels of success, action heroes. Chuck Norris was a legitimate martial artist that won world championships in Karate. Encouraged by Bruce Lee, he took the plunge into acting. Although never the level of Stallone or Schwarzenegger, he did manage to star in several profitable films, including several set in Vietnam where, apparently American now wins the war? Somehow, along with Rambo, films that took out significant numbers of Vietnamese was somehow therapeutic to America’s wounded psyche. Of all of the action heroes, Norris comes across as the calmest and most level headed. However, like Stallone, he was never able to figure out how to do comedy.
Steven Seagal is drawn here as just being weird. Portraying himself as some mysterious, mystical man, he allowed all kinds of unconfirmed rumors to circulate around him. He had a couple of years where his relatively low budget films were successful. Desperate for more action film hits, he was able to convince a studio to greenlight a film that he essentially wrote and directed. Needless to say, it was a disaster. Once again, we see an action hero for whom comedy is apparently a completely foreign language. Proving this point, Seagal is, infamously, Lorne Michael’s least favorite SNL host.
One action hero who did get comedy was Bruce Willis. In Die Hard, he was the first one that actively played against the type of the invincible, muscle bound hero. Watching the film, Schwarzenegger began to see the end of his reign. Although Willis certainly starred in other films (eg Fifth Dimension, Pulp Fiction, Unbreakable, Armageddon), he’ll always be known as John McClane.
Another man that understood comedy was Jackie Chan. Unfortunately, other than the Rush Hour films, Hollywood never really gave him much of a shot. I remember seeing Supercop in the theater and being absolutely astounded by his stunts. Although acknowledging the danger of Hong Kong films, Chan held the action heroes that used stuntmen and, even worse, CGI, in contempt.
Jean-Claude Van Damme is portrayed as a hungry young actor willing to do anything and say anything to become a star. He made use of every opportunity that came his way. Never a huge star, he reached about the same level as Norris or Seagal. Unfortunately, his high octane lifestyle led to many marriages and a cocaine addiction. He now seems to be proceeding a bit more sedately.
I’m not sure why Dolph Lundgren made this list. Yes, he was a great Soviet boxer villain in Rocky IV, but who can name other films he was in? His action hero origin story is certainly interesting. He did make other films, but he was never again close to the level of success from Rocky IV.
What I don’t understand is how Tom Cruise did not make this list. Was he just a hair too young? After all, if you want a military jingoistic film, then you can’t do better than 1986’s Top Gun. Are the Mission Impossible films too cerebral? Was there a minimal body count threshold that his films did not meet? Perhaps because, especially in his early days, he showed a versatility unmatched by any of the other action heroes.
Speaking of body count, apparently when Stallone and Schwarzenegger were trading off doing action films, the film producers would keep track of body count to make sure that the current film exceeded the body count of the previous. Apparently they went even a bit more phallic and there were tales told of comparisons between knife sizes used in Stallone / Schwarzenegger films.
This book might have a bit more meaning to me since I was around when much of these stories unfolded. If you want a really interesting compare / contrast experience, I’d advise first reading Easy Riders, Raging Bulls (I wrote about it here), a book about the serious, angsty development of the 1970s auteurs like Scorsese, Spielberg, Coppola, and Lucas. Follow that up with this book about the bombastic, macho, jingoistic action films of the 1980s and 1990s.
You can then decide if we, as a species, are evolving or devolving.
dorkenstein 