I am not ashamed to say that the 'dumbass action movie' is my favorite cinematic subgenre, hands down. The first movie I ever unabashedly loved was 'Cliffhanger,' which featured Sylvester Stallone as a ridiculously skilled mountain climber who foils a group of greedy thugs (led by John Lithgow of all people).
Of course, 'Cliffhanger' seemed like 'Citizen Kane' to me when I was 7-years-old, and it wasn't long before I sought out any and every movie with Stallone, Schwarzenegger, Van Damme, or Seagal's name on the box. These testosterone-fueled 'classics' served up wall-to-wall action, fantastically cheesy one-liners, and most importantly, brawny protagonists who could beat the shit out of my candy ass. However, this type of film is virtually nonexistent today. What ever happened to the one-man army?
Sure, Seagal and Van Damme are still around (but now their direct-to-video films have passed from the 'so bad they're good' category to the 'so bad they're ... just bad' realm) and the 'Blade' films (with the notable exception of the odious third one) have Wesley Snipes as a formidable one-man army, but most contemporary mindless action movies do not hold a candle to the likes of 'Predator' or the 'Rambo' films. You can blame it on the escalating use of CGI or the overabundance of video game adaptations, but the real culprit is simple: There is a serious lack of convincing male action heroes.
Action hero roles now commonly go to actors like Ben Affleck, Paul Walker, Scott Speedman, Josh Lucas or Thomas Jane. These are men who should be on Calvin Klein billboards making pouty underwear model faces off in the distance, not pretending to save the world. Could these guys 'eat Green Berets for breakfast' like Schwarzenegger's 'Commando'? Could they even beat my ass? I don't think so. And how do you think our elders feel about tough guys like John Wayne, Lee Marvin or Charles Bronson being replaced by ... Orlando Bloom? Come on now, people, Dakota Fanning would make a better action hero than Orlando Bloom.
Other potential candidates have performed spottily, but we've got a few hopefuls. Matt Damon has carved out a niche for himself with the 'Bourne' films (as Paul Rudd's character astutely states in 'The 40-Year-Old Virgin': 'I used to think Damon was kind of a Streisand, but he's really good in 'The Bourne Identity'), 'XXX' had its moments (although Vin Diesel's other films have been uniformly awful), Hugh Jackman makes for a badass Wolverine in the 'X-Men' films, and Nathan Fillion's Mal (of 'Firefly' and 'Serenity') is the closest thing our generation has to Han Solo.
Speaking of Fillion, most pure action is on television nowadays, with shows like 'Alias' and '24' delivering the goods on a regular basis. My favorite TV action hero is Michael Chiklis, who plays the bald terror Vic Mackey on 'The Shield,' and it would be great to see him do a movie that isn't 'Fantastic Four.' Christian Bale also proved he could put foot to ass convincingly in 'Batman Begins,' but he's too good of an actor to only do the action hero thing. The heir apparent to Schwarzenegger's beefy throne is The Rock, and that's working off the quality of only one film, 'The Rundown.' So until another charismatic meathead comes along, the dubious future of the 'dumbass action movie' rests on his bulky shoulders.
