#4: TANGO & CASH (1989)

Two of L.A.'s top rival cops are going to have to work together...even if it kills them!

Lieutenants Ray Tango and Gabriel Cash are the two toppest cops in Los Angeles, which means they are polar opposites who despise each other. Tango is a clean-cut, suave, suit-wearing, stockmarket-playing Playboy type while Cash is a slob who grabs passing pizza without prejudice and wears $9 shirts (which means he's the fun one). Despising both of them equally is Yves Perret, crime lord and drug dealer, who loses millions of dollars from each illegal operation that Tango or Cash bust. Claiming that killing them would be to simply create ten more cops like them, Perret instead deduces that the best way to defeat Tango and Cash is, first, with dishonorm—by framing them for murder and police corruption—and then disposing of them forever—by sending them away to a prison that's populated by the felons and degenerates the cops have spent their entire careers putting away. With Perret and his minions able to infiltrate the corrupt prison at their convenience to whisk the cops away from their cells for nightly torture sessions, Tango and Cash know their next bed check might be their last, so they make plans to escape. After a daring prison break, the two at-odds cops have little choice but to team up, work together, and follow the trail of slimeballs to the head crime kingpin. Along the way, their differing personalities and philosophies will earn big belly laughs as they unleash upon each other unyielding waves of wisecracks, insults, penis-related defamation, and homoerotic bantering, but also while taking the lives of dozens of men, obtaining justice from those who soiled their names, and committing the most epic of high-fives.

Tango & Cash, man-go and smash! Downtown Clown vs. Beverly Hills Wop! This piece of genius was the best farewell to '80s action that anyone without the surname "God" could have created. Directed in 1989 by Andrey Konchalovskiy (Runaway Train), who was fired toward the end of shooting and replaced by Albert Magnoli (Purple Rain), who saw more eye-to-eye with the studio that wanted the film to be lighter, and starring two of the greatest names in actiondom, Tango & Cash was destined to be a balls-to-the-wall, pun-douched, gun-toting, Clint Howard-having good time. Tango & Cash marched into the room, looked all the other buddy cop movies in the face, pushed up their sleeves, and left them all FUBAR, big time. Written by Randy Feldman (Van Damme's Nowhere to Run), Tango & Cash is, once again, one of those rare instances in which all kinds of behind-the-scenes drama could very well have handicapped the film right out of the gate, but even after the original Cash dropped out to star in Road  House, and the script was rewritten numerous times during production, and the producer fired the original director, and four—count'em, four—different men directed portions of the film, and Stallone fired original director of photography Barry Sonnenfeld, nothing could stop this rollicking piece of ridiculousness. The gods of fate and the hands of time worked together massaging the balance to ensure the path for Tango & Cash remained unfettered, unobstructed, and oh yeah, unprecedented. Tango and Cash, Cash and Tango. Let's do it! (Drumbeat.)

When one asks the question, "Remember when action films were allowed to be fun?", this is the title that should pop into your brain. Because that's Tango & Cash: fun. It's fun in cinematic form. And it's not just fun, but it emits fun; it breeds fun. Like the Terminator itself, that's what it does. That's ALL IT DOES. Tango & Cash wants only to entertain. There's no social commentary going on, no lessons to learn, no hyperbolic dangers that could one day manifest in the real world. But that's cool, because not every action romp needs such weighty ideas. Demolition Man attempted to masquerade every so often as satire, but it, too, preferred to focus on John Spartan and Simon Phoenix trying to murder-death-kill each other. Death Wish 3 had even less to say beyond "stand up for yourself!" (kind of), but was actually just an excuse for Paul Kersey to forcefully remove teeth from the mouths of punks with wooden boards. Tango & Cash not only has nothing of merit to say, it doesn't even know how to speak—unless, of course, it's when our leads are either mercilessly mocking each other in every possible sense—appearance, masculinity (or lack thereof), member proportions, rationale, intelligence—or if one of them is fucking the other's sister.

But it's all okay, people. Tango & Cash is perfect as it is—warts, gratuitous breasts, and all. It's a loud, brash, politically incorrect, violent work of art that can be summed up in three simple words: dick-measuring contest.

Let's enhance that.

The scene in which our heroes share a prison shower scene and make snide remarks about the other's dick size, on its surface, may just seem like something two arrogant, constantly competing guys would probably do. But in reality, all of Tango & Cash is one big dick-measuring contest. If Tango's going to psyche out a couple of drug dealers speeding at him in a fast-moving tanker truck by firing shots into their windshield while standing directly in the path of the truck, then Cash is going to giggle uproariously at the headlines in the newspaper about his latest drug bust before taking several shots to his bullet-proof vested chest and pursuing the would-be assassin till he gets his man.

And later, in court and upon their arraignment for the bogus charges against them, Tango stands up and says:

Your Honor, I have been a policeman for twelve years, and I think it's the best organization in the country. At times, I've been accused of being too aggressive at taking criminals off the streets. Well, if that's a sin, then I guess I'm guilty. All the cops I've worked with are good cops. You are...doing a tough job. And I only hope that the outcome of this trial is such, that the whole department is not judged by what has transpired here. Thank you.

To which Cash adds, while addressing the court:

This whole thing FUCKING SUCKS!

The fact that these characters are constantly trying to upstage each other, either directly or omnisciently, pretty much sums up the dynamic they'll maintain throughout, regardless of the notion that their relationship systematically progresses from enemies to frenemies. Even as they walk down Rape Alley in their new prison home, they can hardly curb their impulse to out-joke each other. And as cell after cell of prisoners bellow horribly the rape Tango and Cash will endure ("I'm gonna put brown sugar in your ass!" screams a black inmate), Cash eyes all the burning debris and remarks that he's forgotten to bring the marshmallows. Framed for murder? Threats of rape? None of it matters—just know that X is funnier.

The buddy cop movie has been a big go-to in the genre for going on decades now, and it remains a popular gimmick even today. Filmmaker Walter Hill has rocked this concept no less than four times, with increasingly diminishing results. Taking it back to an overall sense, there's Riggs and Murtaugh of Lethal Weapon, Cates and Hammond of 48 Hours, McClane and Carver of Die Hard with a Vengeance, Lockhart and "Gay" Perry of Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang, and to get really abstract, Vincent and Max in Collateral—all are not just examples of the buddy cop formula, but also arguably among the best action/thriller offerings in general. This idea of pairing up at-odds characters and forcing them into situations where they have no choice but to depend on the other is a concept consistently ripe for exploration. While this formula doesn't always work (let's throw out Showdown in Little Tokyo and Red Heat as examples), every so often two actors are paired together resulting in not just believable and infectious chemistry, but an unforgiving good time. Tango & Cash makes for the best. Anyone who says differently will have their tongue ripped out. With a tow truck.

Tango & Cash sports some of the best character actors working today (though some are no longer with us). Among the standouts are big-faced thespian Robert Z'Dar as...um, "Face." He likely looks familiar to fans of the Maniac Cop trilogy, as he played the titular role in those shockingly successful horror films scattered throughout the '80s and '90s. "Face" has the honor of presenting the first on-screen villain for Ray Tango, and in typical high-watermark-level action films, he's left emasculated and humiliated after crossing his path—not once, not twice, but thrice! After he eventually returns as a sort of secondary henchman, doing battle with Stallone on a rain-drenched rooftop, he offers a much more intimidating villain than the many others against which Stallone would fight later on in his career (like Eric Roberts).

Leveling out the good guys is Geoffrey Lewis, who plays Captain Schroeder and delivers one of the best/worst puns in the entire film. ("Is this how you screen all your guests?") Lewis happily plays the characteristic superior who seems as proud as he is annoyed with his progeny of sorts. In addition to his awesome/terrible dialogue mentioned above, Lewis, in one silent second of screen time, perfectly encapsulates the film-established dynamic between superior and subject that often played out in the genre during this era: that of the tough but lovable captain overseeing the unorthodox but admittedly effective methods of his Dennis-the-Menace-like underling. In the film's opener in which Tango haphazardly fires a bullet into a gasoline tanker to prove that it's not filled with gasoline, but cocaine, Captain Schroeder spreads his suit jacket to place his hands on his hips, cocks his head, and looks adoringly/tskingly at Tango, his facial expression alone nearly screaming, "Could I love this knucklehead more?" It's perfect.

This list of "hey, him!" easily continues with Michael J. Pollard (Scrooged), Brion James (Blade Runner), Eddie Bunker (Mr. Blue from Reservoir Dogs as well as real-life career criminal), James Hong (Big Trouble in Little China), Michael Jeter (The Green Mile), and the imitable Clint Howard (everything, plus Seinfeld).

THE GOOD GUYS

Ray Tango. Alias Captain Fantastic. Taurus. Westside. Second best cop in Los Angeles. Peewee. Part-time stockbroker. Rambo belittler. Snow maker. Cocaine licker. Guest screener. Sister enabler. Cock blocker. Candidate for the Psycho Hall of Fame.

Rolling out the red carpet for this action icon, Stallone returns to Top Ten Murdered Men after his #8 appearance in Demolition Man.

Stallone starred in thirteen films during the 1980s, and if we scrape away all the franchise stuff and just focus on his one-offs, that cuts the number down to seven. If we cut that number down to the ones worth a damn, we get three. And if we need one bonafide-fucking-classic, we get Tango & Cash. Stallone would later go on record as saying that all of his Rocky and Rambo sequels (minus Rocky Balboa and 2008's Rambo) were nothing more than vanity projects—an excuse for him to exploit popular characters, rule the box office, and show off his impressive physique. Between that, and the fact that his non-franchise picks of the '80s had him playing downtrodden characters in shitty or slimy situations, Tango & Cash was the only flick in that ten-year stretch that let him have any fun. And that might be why his turn as Ray Tango results in such jocularity despite Stallone's usual misgivings about playing such a goofball. An evaluation of Stallone's action career results in a bevy of films in which humor or irony wasn't an aspect on which he relied, and that kind of attraction toward the dark continues for him even today. The Expendables aside (which do get lighter as they progress), Stallone has always been drawn to dark and moody characters. His John Rambo does a complete 360 over the course of the First Blood series, going from haunted, to haunted/pissed, to patriotic/cartoonish, and back to haunted again. Assassins, or Bullet to the Head, or his remake of Get Carter present characters with a depressing past who wouldn't know a humor joke if it cupped the balls and stroked the shaft—and that's what Stallone likes (heh heh heh). Even in Grudge Match, a send-up of his cinematic history as boxer Rocky Balboa and among the broadest comedies he's ever done, he mostly opted to remain stoic and still while his co-star, Robert De Niro, chewed every piece of scenery and mugged for every camera. There's something about the comedy genre that Stallone doesn't quite "get," and this is likely why, looking back, his contributions to the comedy world are very few, very far between, and most of them lousy. (Simply said: Oscar.)

Having said that, Stallone's take on Ray Tango isn't so much a mixed bag as it is an occasionally uneven approach to a character. While that could be due to Stallone's discomfort within the confines of the comedy genre, it more has to do with how his performance ultimately compares to the character of...

Gabriel Cash. Alias Queen for a Day. Leo. Eastside. Second best cop in Los Angeles. Mini Mouse. Pizza lover. Pompadour rocker. Cross dresser. Tango impressionist. English-language instructor. Alimony dater. Willing cuckolder.

Kurt Russell. Just say his name. Let it caress your tongue like a fine lager. Not enough? Snake Plissken. Wyatt Earp. R.J. MacCready. The guy from Overboard. Jack Fucking Burton. The guy who should've done Road House, but didn't, because the natural order knew that the cosmos could never survive the repercussions and relentless sonic booms from something that awesome.

Kurt Russell is Hollywood royalty. His CV is not just solid, but filled with characters that have since become iconic, and films that have since been blessed with that feared word: "classic." Though he deserves to go down in action history based on that alone (and he likely will), the one main thing lacking in his career is the fact that, beyond the Escape films he did with John Carpenter, he was always part of an ensemble. He never obtained his one-man army title or franchise that saw him strapping on the camouflage and taking to the ______ to rescue _____. He never had his scene where he slid on the cannon-sized firearm primarily used for decimating tiny armies of people and using it against the mercenaries or the leather-clad bikers or the street punks who'd shat upon him their ultimately self-destructive supreme disrespect. Sure, Snake Plissken went on all kinds of solo missions, but always ended up with a collection of weirdos, misfits, and wormy guys by his side. Russell never achieved that godlike lone-gunman status, and never reveled in the excess of the 1980s. Simply put, he never had his one solo action outing that grew to such ridiculous proportions that years later it would be looked back on with equal helpings ironic and genuine love. That's not at all to talk down on his filmography—the fact alone that he was in The Thing is cooler than anything else legitimate the more typical action icons have ever done (yeah, more than First Blood, more than The Terminator)—but at times it feels like Russell walked away from a meeting or shredded a script that could have delivered unto us that kind of brainless, bloodied bout of orgiastic carnage and destruction to which most of our typical action guys can claim. (He also turned down Stallone's offer to appear in The Expendables, claiming his desire to focus less on ensemble work, but considering he joined an even bigger ensemble in Furious 7, that was likely just polite Russell speak for "this script is really shitty.") However, let's not forget his moment in Tombstone during which he blows away Powers Booth while charging across a river, completely unconcerned with the bullets whizzing by his head, bellowing "NO!" over and over again, because he is just that pissed off. Try for the rest of your life: you will never do anything as manly.

In Tango & Cash, Russell feels right at home. Channeling Jack Burton, one of his most celebrated characters, and with a comparably unending supply of yuck-yucks, his Gabriel Cash is the man you want to invite to every party. He's a poor slob, kind of a loser outside of his cop job, and he's cool with it. Though Tango shares equal screen time with Cash, and though Stallone shares equal billing with Russell, in many ways this feels more like a Cash film than a Tango film. Though Tango sheds his primped and proper Playboy look pretty early on, and there's no kind of attempt to maintain his type-A personality for the remaining iteration of the character, leaving him with the same rough-and-tough cocky exterior as his counterpart, Stallone never feels 100% confident uttering some of the cornier dialogue or some of the more groan-inducing puns. Russell, however, nails it—the dialogue, the mood, the tone, and the timing. While they match each other pound for pound—puns beget puns, punches/kicks/shootings inspire another round of such—neither of our leads ever come across as more/less masculine than the other. But when it comes to personality and charisma, Russell owns this shit in spades.

THE BAD GUY

Yves Perret. Drug dealer. Mouse squeezer. Game fixer. Post-Labor-Day white-wearer. Insistence discourager. Grantland Rice quoter. Disliker of both Tango and Cash.

Jack Palance! Now this is one cool motherfucker right here. Perhaps most famous to modern audiences as playing Carl Grissom in Tim Burton's 1989 take on Batman, Palance, over his long career, played an incarnation of Dracula for television, won an Oscar for City Slickers, delighted horror fans in the inexplicably well-cast horror schlock Alone in the Dark (also starring Martin Landau), and finally, for-realsies punched both Marlon Brando and Burt Lancaster square in the face. In Tango & Cash, he presents a refreshingly different take on "the villain" than has been featured in Top Ten Murdered Men so far. While, say, Out for Justice's Richie Madano was a drug-addicted maniacal madman, and Face/Off's Castor Troy was more of a likable cartoon exploding with uncontainable character, Palance's Perret is calm, cool, collected, and calculating. He knows that Tango and Cash are a problem, but unlike his immediate henchmen who assume that killing them off would be best, Perret uses his political and official ties to make his move. He plays it smart, keeping a distance from all the nefaria. He moves like a ghost, drifting unseen down a highway in a stretch limousine, right past one of his busted drug operations; he sneaks into the dripping, rusty prison holding Tango and Cash with as much ease as when he sneaks right back out again. And yet, much like the very white suit he wears, his reputation remains spotless. This might sound like a "boring" appoach to a villain for those who are unfamiliar with the film, but Tango & Cash offers up enough shooting exchanges and body trauma between all of Perret's henchmen so that when it comes time for Tango and Cash to cross paths with Perret in the flesh there's an almost gentlemanly approach by Palance to his villainous character. There's no need to fall back on drawn out gun battles and displays of bravado. At the very least, and though he was doomed to fail because he's the bad guy, his scheme to relegate Tango and Cash to rats in a maze ultimately proves successful—"We're in a maze!" Tango remarks during the final act as they drive their RV-from-hell around Perret's compound—though the end result isn't exactly as Perret had hoped. Besides, Palance was 70 at this point in his career, so it's not like he could do somersaults and throw stuntmen over his head, so shut your mouths. Guy did ONE-ARMED PUSH-UPS AT THE OSCARS. AT 72.

Palance maintained an eclectic career of discerning quality, playing a scenery-chewing Perret two years before he would win that Oscar, and two years after, would be appearing in a direct-to-video sequel to Van Damme's Cyborg. He was an interesting actor, and an even more interesting man, who was able to evaluate his body of work as objectively as one ever could:

"Most of the stuff I do is garbage."

Well then!

THE CASUALTIES

The Good Guys. Abiding by the knees-touching-ground rules, a dozen prisoners fall at the might of Tango and Cash, who utilize a baseball bat and their general surroundings to quell them all. Tango and Cash blast ass across Perret's construction compound in the film's last act, shooting his underlings indiscriminately, and amidst all the flames and explosions, specific individual casualties aren't really captured. It comes across more as general carnage than itemized murder. Cash bellows "that's all of 'em!" at the end of their killathon, and there looked to be about two dozen dudes on site, so, that sounds close enough. Later, Tango and Cash shoot-to-kill six more bad guys, along with Quan (James Hong) and Lopez, Perret's #2s. Cash shoves a grenade into Requin's knickers and punches him down the stairs while Tango high-kicks a random henchman into a glass table—a henchman who had yet to appear on screen, and who likely appeared only so Tango had someone to fight while Cash was taking on another sub-villain that the film had bothered to introduce earlier.

The Bad Guys. Cash's friend Matt gets a slit throat for trying to help our heroes escape the prison and a crooked FBI agent is blown up by a car bomb. Pretty weak, bad guys!

THE BEST KILL

"Face" frying in the power lines of the prison rooftop sure makes for a shocking death!

How about that joke?

THE DAMAGE

Tango and Cash endure a night-time electroshock session down in the prison boiler room. Cash wears pantyhose. Tango dives away from an explosion. Cash takes a shot in the arm.

THE BAD GUY'S COMEUPPANCE

After initially being thrown off by the disorientation of the house of mirrors Perret has in his office for some reason, Tango and Cash aim for the knees on the count of three, but somehow end up shooting him in the brain...on two.

"My sights are off!" Tango says with a shrug.

"Mine too!" Cash agrees.

Sure they are, guys. Sure they are. ♥

THE LINE

Every line in this thing is in high contention for "the line." There is more dialogue dedicated to being ironic or amusing than that which is dedicated merely to providing exposition (boring!) and so determining what stands above the rest is a tall order. However, after Cash completely destroys a Russian civilian's car while in the process of taking down a potential assassin, and after the Russian goes off on a foreign-tongued tirade, Cash smiles a big cheesy smile and quips, "Welcome to America!"

Honorable mention goes to: "FUBAR: Fucked up beyond all recognition" and "English 101."

THE VERDICT

Stallone seems to be, once again, pursuing sequels to every one of his franchises and one-off hits like there's no tomorrow. He unretired Rocky for Creed, wrote Creed II, spearheaded Rambo: Last Blood, and Cliffhanger 2 is shooting right now, as there are more cliffs that need hanging. Given its cult status, and the fact that one can't even mention its title while in the company of like-minded aficionados without a unifying proclamation of "I fucking love that movie!" followed by a subsequent and supreme moment of self-satisfaction, it's perplexing that Stallone hasn't mentioned Tango & Cash 2 even as a side comment. Unpopular opinions are those which show appreciation and enthusiasm for his recent moneymaker, The Expendables franchise, but one wonders how many of its supporters would be willing to erase it all from history if it meant seeing Ray Tango and Gabriel Cash come together for one more pun-hurling, prison-breaking, dick-belittling, high-fiving extravaganza of manliness.

#8: DEMOLITION MAN (1993)

The 21st Century’s most dangerous cop.
The 21st Century’s most ruthless criminal.

The year is temporarily 1996. Los Angeles is a fiery hellhole. Criminals run rampant, and the lights and sirens of police cars flash and shriek constantly. John Spartan, detective for the LAPD, is on the trail of his arch nemesis of two years, Simon Phoenix, who has hijacked a bus of thirty passengers and taken them all hostage within an abandoned factory. Spartan bungy jumps in from a helicopter, guns blazing, to take down Phoenix once and for all, but the madman has other plans: he sets fire to the place and the two duke it out, and even though Spartan disarms Phoenix and takes him into custody, Phoenix ultimately has the upper hand, as those thirty hostages have lost their lives in the exploding factory. Spartan is charged with manslaughter for the deaths of the hostages and gets a seventy-year sentence in a cryogenic prison, where he will share ice cube space alongside his greatest enemy. Flash forward 36 years to the year 2032. At a routine parole meeting, during which Phoenix has been defrosted, he breaks out of his restraints and begins wreaking havoc across the new LA – now called San Angeles, revitalized and redubbed by a man named Dr. Raymond Cocteau following a disastrous earthquake. Now inexplicably three times as strong, fluent in Spanish, and adept at computer hacking, Phoenix begins carrying out the orders of the disembodied voice inside his head…orders that command him to kill a man named Edgar Friendly, leader of a rebellion of the disenchanted called “Scraps” who refuse to be part of Dr. Cocteau’s new world order, and who instead live below the streets of San Angeles, emerging only to steal food and knock over lots of restaurant tents and stuff. In a future where violence is almost non-existent, the castrated SAPD doesn’t know what to do, so they defrost the one man who does: John Spartan. Saddled with a new partner – the ‘90s-obsessed Lenina Huxley – Spartan will do battle once again with his foe amid a new futuristic landscape in which he will find himself confused by nearly every technological amenity while proving that the old ways are still the best ways…

Not that the film world has become less intrigued by the potentials of the future, but the late ‘80s/early ’90s were a little too infatuated with the notion of how the world could possibly look in the next century to come. You’ll notice not a single film ever made that was set in the future was a positive one – every novelist, screenwriter, and filmmaker living and dead who dabbled in the make-believe world of the possible had been terrified, and these “what if?” environments shared much in common: cities are uniform, sterile, and manned by slick-looking sentries in tinted masked helmets; interiors are brightly lit like wealthy hospital wards and everyone wears uniformed clothing; no one uses paper, only screens; no one steers their own cars, and sometimes those cars don’t even touch the road upon which they are driving; doors open by themselves, and omniscient computer voices know everything. No one’s ever made a future-set film where the future looks better. 

The landscape of Demolition Man sure doesn’t! 

The film’s prologue is set only three years into the future and things already look like hammered shit. Way to be optimistic!

Directed by Marco Brambilla (whose only other directorial feature credit is 1997’s Excess Baggage), Demolition Man had a fairly troubled production. Allegedly, though the screenplay’s final credits go to three writers, it was being almost constantly rewritten during shooting (the history of which is so confusing that more than half-a-dozen people, from Night of the Creeps director Fred Dekker to big-chinned actor Craig Scheffer, claim a modicum of story credit), adding and dropping significant subplots depending on the moods of Warner Bros. executives. (For example: in the finished film, John Spartan’s daughter is still alive and well, but he decides not to reunite with her because of how much time has gone by, but earlier versions of the rough cut had her living among the Edgar Friendly “Scraps” and inevitably encountering her father during his trip to the underground. In certain scenes where Spartan is underground and shielding a dirty female with gigantic hair from a burst of gunfire, this seeming bystander who ultimately becomes a random extra was initially meant to be his daughter.)

However, you can’t keep a good concept down, and in spite of its troubled production, Demolition Man results in a fun, funny, and extremely entertaining film that hardly ever stops to take a breath. It’s of the rare breed of action film that’s as comedic as it is filled with carnage and wonderful violence. Nearly every line in some way is meant to be amusing, ironic, or confounding. What’s most comedically appealing about this version of the future is how pussified it’s all become. The San Angeles police department are entirely useless; they answer emergency calls with big smiles plastered on their faces and nary a look of concern. Homicides are so rare that when they occur, they’ve been given the term “murder-death-kills,” because in the future, one person killing another is, like, three times as bad. (“We’re police officers! We’re not trained to handle this kind of violence!”) Things like minor car accidents offer big thrills to the rather bored Lenina Huxley, the film’s unsubtle homage to the famed author of “Brave New World” (title-dropped by Phoenix during his trip to the “Hall of Violence” in the San Andreas museum).

Speaking of unsubtle, all of Demolition Man is. This is a film in which the lead hero gets so pissed off by his nemesis trying to set him on fire that he yell-runs through a pool of burning gasoline just to punch him in the face. This is a film in which it’s established that the hero’s nickname is “Demolition Man” because he’s apparently incapable of carrying out his duties as an LAPD detective without destroying at least one building per assignment (enforced by numerous supporting characters calling him “the Demolition Man,” including his captain, who is “getting tired of this 'Demolition Man' crap”). This is a film that drops a reference to Rambo, but which also stars the guy who was in Rambo…as Rambo. This is a film that kinda-sorta pretends to be “about” something and endeavors to convey the emotional consequences involved with the idea of freezing prisoners and conserving their physical age while the rest of the world ages around them, offering exactly one scene in which Spartan kinda-sorta seems quite upset about being conscious during his time in cryo and seeing his wife “beat her fists against the block of ice that used to be her husband” but who INSTANTLY drops all this not much later when he’s all-too-eager to have sex with Huxley. (“I was wondering if you’d like to have sex.” “OH, YEAH!”) (Speaking of, in the contactless sex sequence, have you ever noticed that, just before they start, Huxley gives him a hand-towel? Is that so he can, you know...wipe himself off once they're done? Eeeeuuuugh.)  

Demolition Man may not boast the biggest body count (this title will likely see the least amount of casualties of all the films that appear in this column), but what it sacrifices for bloodletting it makes up for with its humor, which works much more often than it doesn’t. This idea of a future that’s so hell-bent on forcing people to be happy that single use of the word “joy” has become scarce, replaced with “joyjoy” – (“Enjoyjoy your meal, sir”) – is amusing obviously because of how absurd it is, but also doubly so when you realize that this is the caliber of writing with which we’re dealing – that instead of constructing a future where the idea of enforced happiness is subtly suggested, we’re provided this notion of enforced happiness via people saying “joy” twice. And this humor continues, from the curious to the downright surreal: the three seashells joke has become legendary (and is ruined the second your Googling leads you to Stallone’s icky explanation), but it’s the odder alternatives for culture offered in this future that are both comedic and clever – the “oldies” radio station consists of ‘50s-era commercial jingles, like Armor Hotdogs and Jolly Green Giant, and the only restaurant franchise that still exists is Taco Bell (or Pizza Hut, depending on your location in the world), which has become fine dining. Salt, smoking, meat, unlicensed pregnancy, profanity, non-educational toys, physical sex, and high-fiving have become illegal. It would seem that Dr. Cocteau’s douche-bagging of anything the least bit bad for his citizens inadvertently caused anything even suggestive of culture to also come out in the wash.

Along with this scrubbing of culture, something not touched on enough in this alternate future is suggested in exactly one moment during the third act: when speaking with Benjamin Bratt's Alfredo Garcia, Spartan makes a reference to Pancho Villa, to which he responds, “Who?” For most of Spartan’s defrosting, it’s been his pop culture references that have been greeted by blank stares and ignorance, only now it’s his reference to a genuine and significant part of history that someone doesn’t know, and that’s a scary implication of where our future is headed. More of this would have been appreciated, but then again, who needs all that weighty-themes shit when you’ve got scenes of John Spartan flinging a television by its wire into the spine of Simon Phoenix while shouting, “You’re on TV!”

Perhaps the scariest thing about Demolition Man isn’t its lame and neutered look at the future, but that when the film came out in 1993, this prediction of the future was 36 years away. As of this writing, we’re thirty years closer, with only eight more years to go. The future that was presented to us in 1993 is scarily on the path that was predicted, and this can be scientifically confirmed utilizing one strong piece of evidence: people in Demolition Man used tablets with FaceTime capabilities JUST LIKE NOW.

RUN!

Why This Future is Awesome:

• Arnold Schwarzenegger was president.
• Taco Bell is everywhere.
• Denis Leary is living underground, so most of civilization is spared his awful comedy.
• Laserdisc is still the preferred home video format.
• When girls video-call you, their boobs are out.
• The eradication of one-ply toilet paper.
• Girls who look like Sandra Bullock love Jackie Chan movies, fluid transference (eventually), and Lethal Weapon 3.

THE GOOD GUY

John Spartan. LAPD detective. Breeder of destruction. Somewhat-but-not-really conflicted widower. Smoker of Marlboros. Skipper of prison protocol. User of the incredible descriptor “fuck-faced.” Driver of giant cannolis. Knitter of apology sweaters. Dismisser of profanity robots. Exuberant supporter of old-fashioned sex. Emitter of acceptable-smelling breath.

Oh, Stallone, you wonderful action legend. Between Rocky Balboa and John Rambo, you’ve managed to create two culturally significant figures in cinema history, and audiences will always be grateful.

His somewhat recent and successful returns with Rocky Balboa, Creed, and Rambo were worthy returns to his most famous roles, and they reminded people why he was so successful in Hollywood for going on three decades. However The Expendables franchise may have caused fans to lower their opinions of him, Stallone is a great screenwriter and a great director, and he’s earned the right to keep making the films he wants to make until he feels it’s time to step aside. In our current landscape where controversy erupts over the amount of films nominated for Academy Awards that lack the involvement of Black individuals in prominent positions, or the prejudicial behavior toward aging women or even women in general as it pertains to roles they can obtain, somehow it’s still okay for people to joke about guys like Stallone and Schwarzenegger for insisting on maintaining a role in the action genre despite their age. Comments regarding Stallone revisiting the John Rambo character for Rambo: Last Blood, his fifth and purported final entry in the Rambo series, leaned on the disrespectful and irritatingly predictable: “What, does he break out of a retirement home LOL?” And while these same people blindly show enthusiasm for what will soon be the eleventh film in which a group of young beautiful people steal cars and/or money and race around the streets of foreign countries, these commenters will sling these kinds of ignorant condemnations against these icons they grew up watching, who got them into the types of films that have since regressed to the watered-down PG-13 nonsense which has dominated the genre, and frankly, who fucking paved the way for these films of heightened-ridiculousness and über-machoism in the first place. (If you think the Fast and the Furious or John Wick franchises, or any film The Rock has made, would exist without the likes of Stallone or Schwarzenegger, you have a lot to learn.) Ironically, these guys have made belief-suspending films about time-traveling killer assassin cyborgs, or mountain climbers possessing the uncanny ability to kill off a dozen well-trained mercenaries with mountain picks – films now considered classics, and eagerly accepted into the lexicon – but asking audiences to accept that men in their late-60s are capable of running, throwing a punch, and toting a gun is apparently something entirely out of the realm of believability. What pissers.

Anyway, Stallone is a lot of fun here in the very fun film that surrounds him. Demolition Man is stupid, and everyone involved knows it’s stupid, which is why everyone lets loose in their performances without a hint of hesitation. Stallone seems incredibly comfortable as John Spartan, playing a bad-ass with charm, wit, and yeah, even a bit of sex appeal. Even though he manages to show off some decent comedic chops and timing, he’s not an actor who relied on that kind of technique for much of his career, as he’s always been much more serious-minded in his approach to roles and his self-penned screenplays. Despite his Rambo films getting progressively sillier, the John Rambo character never really relied on humor as a crutch – not even in Rambo III, arguably the silliest of the sequels. (Perhaps it’s because of his involvement in Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot!, one of the worst things in history, that caused him to hold back on roles of a more comedic nature.)

Comedy aside, Stallone is more than up for all the action elements required: the man knows how to hold a gun, look bad-ass, and run from explosions. If we’re keeping count, Stallone has FOUR slow-motion sequences in which he is either running through fire or from explosions while bellowing that iconic Stallone yell. He was in great shape at this point in his career, so he was still of the mind to show off as much of his (naked) body as possible without reverting back to his brief early career working in stag films. Between Demolition Man and 1994’s The Specialist, in which he shared disconcertingly unsexy sex scenes with Sharon Stone, let’s just say, during the mid-’90s, he more than met his quota of instances in which the camera stopped just above his pubes.

One last thing that bolsters his performance is the incredible on-screen chemistry he shares with his foe, his foil, his dastardly arch nemesis…

THE BAD GUY

Simon Phoenix. Modern-LA crime lord. Future-SA crime lord. Bleacher of heads. Wearer of bumble-bee-colored outfits. Also a smoker of Marlboros. Mocker of Asian tourists. (“Ha ha! Ching chawng ching chawng!”) Future enthusiast. Proud user of the opener “Simon says.” Muser of the accordion. Lover of Jeffrey Dahmer.

The official Simon Phoenix wrap sheet is as follows: four counts of murder; two counts each of rape, assault, grand theft, and robbery; and one count each of possession of a controlled substance, counterfeiting, credit card fraud, driving under the influence, extortion, grand theft, inciting to riot, jury rigging, petty theft, public drunkenness (which becomes more and more hilariously lame when you remember that he’s also a convicted rapist twice over), smuggling, and obviously the best is saved for last: tax evasion (another thing the future got right).

Wesley Snipes is another action actor who was simply not given enough opportunities to show off his talents as a comedic one. (Thankfully Stallone gave him another chance with The Expendables 3, in which Snipes’ character, Doc, steals every scene.) Outside of entertaining and harmless but forgettable titles like Money Train or Drop Zone, Snipes spent most of his career playing serious roles in serious films (King of New York comes to mind), or the kind of silly in which he showed no emotions at all (the Blade trilogy). Without hyperbole, his Simon Phoenix may very well be one of the greatest villains in action film history. There’s no quip cheesy enough and no physicality he won’t incorporate into his performance. An actor legitimately trained in martial artistry, having obtained black belts in Shotokan and Hapkido, Snipes famously had to tame his own fighting techniques on-screen because he moved so fast that the cameras only recorded blurs.

At the start of the film, Snipes is essentially playing a cartoon version of the antagonist he played in New Jack City – that of a crime lord who took over an entire city, out of which he planned on setting up a distribution center for drugs, only now instead of drugs he’s dispensing carnage and blonde hair dye. He warned everyone to stay out of his part of town, including the cops and the postmen, but the damned bus drivers just…wouldn’t…listen.

Wesley Snipes has never been more fun to watch.

IMDB claims the roles of John Spartan and Simon Phoenix were originally offered to Steven Seagal and Jean-Claude Van Damme, respectively. Though Demolition Man is awesome as it is, seeing this film with this proposed cast would’ve been a different kind of awesome for two reasons: Van Damme makes an excellent villain, and those two action icons can’t fucking stand each other.

THE MURDER-DEATH-KILLS

John Spartan, for all his self-proclamations of being a maniac, manages only a disappointing body count of nine bad guys (four of which were actually blown up by the factory Phoenix set on fire): two dead by gunshot, two by body trauma, and Phoenix's dispatchment from Planet Earth.

Simon Phoenix is the big winner here in terms of murder(-death-kills): he fries thirty hijacked bus passengers, stabs one dude in the brain, commits bodily trauma against two soon-to-be-corpses, kills an off-screen doctor utilizing a mysterious means, tosses Dr. Raymond Cocteau into a fireplace, and according to the automated computer of the SAPD, commits against Warden William Smithers: “severe eye trauma, ruptured spleen, punctured lung, broken rib, internal bleeding” and then rips out the dude’s eyeball.

There are still all kinds of scenes where a hundred dudes get pretty hurt; however, disappointingly, it would seem most of those inflicted were just knocked out. BORING.

THE BEST KILL

Warden Smithers, by far. Phoenix plucks out his eye for the retinal scan security system that will let him walk right out of prison, and the warden’s slow death is broadcast via video into the SAPD station, which allows them all to see just what kind of maniac with whom they must now contend.

THE DAMAGE

Except for some face/body blows, Spartan gets by fine: some future-fun car-crash secure foam rips his clothes; he gets squeezed pretty hard by a giant carnival claw hook; and he endures being body-whipped by a chain. Oh, and the whole framed-for-manslaughter/frozen-for-36-years-while-remaining-conscious thing.

THE BAD GUY’S COMEUPPANCE

At the beginning of the film, Phoenix says, “I’d lose my head if it weren’t attached!”

At the end of the film, Spartan kicks Phoenix’s fucking head off.

THE LINE

“He doesn't know how to use the three seashells!”

THE VERDICT

Ultimately, Demolition Man is the same old stoic-but-human good guy vs. the flamboyant and dynamic bad guy, but it wants to present this classic conflict within the confines of a futuristic landscape to cause our hero and villain both confusion and delight. Sure, lots of the plot points don’t make sense, from the significant–the film asks us to accept that a person can have information uploaded into their brain that makes them physically stronger–to the insignificant–why does Edgar Friendly’s underground rebellion have access to high-tech automated graffiti machines that pop up from the ground and spray their tags on public property, but apparently can’t afford any fucking food? In the end it doesn’t matter, because what we see unfold before us is a lot of fun: Spartan and Phoenix make for a great challenge to each other, Bob Gunton as the SAPD chief once again plays an incredible dick, and the well-meaning but sort of clueless Huxley tries to capture early’90s tough guy vernacular and accidentally says stuff like, “Let’s go blow this guy!”

And that will always provide a joyjoy feeling.

#9: FACE-OFF (1997)

In order to catch him, he must become him. 

Los Angeles FBI agent Sean Archer, investigating a sociopath crime-lord (one Castor Troy), watches as his own son takes an assassin’s bullet that was actually meant for himself – fired by that very same crime-lord. With his life now mostly destroyed, Archer becomes obsessed with finally putting an end to Troy’s career of terrorism and espionage. Meanwhile, on the home front, Archer’s daughter begins to act out, and his wife doesn’t know how to talk to him. He snaps in anger at his investigatory team and finds no joy in pretty much any aspect of life. But finally, Archer and Troy eventually cross paths, and after an intense and dramatic confrontation at an airport hangar, the evil-minded genius and his brother are caught, with the former ending up in a coma and the latter in a maximum security prison. But with the brothers’ nefarious plot, which includes a ton of explosives, still poised to happen, Archer agrees to a highly experimental procedure in which he will switch faces with that of his arch nemesis in order to mine for information from his enemy’s brother and no one except for the three people doing the actual procedure will know who he really is and that includes his own family because why the fuck not? It sounds like a really good and low-stakes idea. But after the comatose Troy awakens to see that his face has been taken, and that there’s this other spare face floating around in this futuristic fish bowl, Troy takes a page out of Archer’s book and begins to infiltrate his dogged pursuer’s life with his new face, teaching Archer’s daughter how to stab, his wife how to sex, his boss how to die just by screaming at him, and everyone else just how much fun he is. With Archer and Troy now Troy and Archer, their pseudo-lives collide in a majestic art-installation of bullets, doves, and blowing, flapping, slow-motion coats. It’s awesome.

Man...Face/Off. Only in the ’90s did this sound like a good idea. And it not only sounded like a good idea, but it was a good idea. Following Nicolas Cage’s much-deserved Oscar win for his role in Leaving Las Vegas (1995), Hollywood did what it does: took advantage of his new spotlight and put him in nonsense very antithetical to his Oscar-winning performance, and he suddenly and inexplicably found himself the go-to action leading man. He would go on to star, back-to-back, in the holy Cage action trifecta of The Rock (1996), Con Air (1997), and Face/Off., Not only were these two of the best consecutive years in action history, it would turn out Cage had saved the best for last. And because this is a John Woo flick, you’re going to get all the doves, eye close-ups, and post-production slow motion you can stand. But that’s not all: John Travolta hams it up, Nicolas Cage whirls around while shooting for NO REASON, Gina Gershon uncharacteristically does not remove her clothes, and we get cameos from Tommy Flanagan, John Carroll Lynch, Thomas Jane, and Joe Bob Fuckin' Briggs. And it’s all glorious.

Face/Off is madness. For over two hours, the plot will be ludicrous, the performances will be cartoonish, and the action will be brutal and unending. Nothing about Face/Off should work. Not one executive in Hollywood should have finished a meeting that began with, “Okay, so, a good guy and a bad guy SWITCH FACES.” An Oscar-winner and a two-time Oscar-nominee should not have been spotted anyhere near this script, this concept, this unbelievable cacophony of cinematic insanity. But my god, it happened – somehow it all came together. Face/Off got the green light, it got the proven director, it got the legendary cast. It soon existed; it became a thing; the action genre hasn’t been the same since.

THE GOOD GUY(S)(?)

ON LEFT: Sean Archer. Mourning father. Distant husband. Ass-bug-infested member of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Superior to The Wire's Bunny Colvin. Obsessed with catching the man indirectly responsible for the death of his son. Looks a lot like a corpse when under medical anesthesia.

Within the confines of the very eclectic dichotomy that Face/Off presents, Nicolas Cage is essentially playing two entirely different roles, though one would be considered his primary and the other his secondary. Once Cage picks up where Travolta left off, his layered and extremely interesting performance builds off the rather surprisingly philosophical foundation that is inexplicably present in this very stupid action film (the one that includes a speedboat-chase finale): that for a large portion of the running time, both men – prominent actors – are actually satirizing the art of acting into their own performances; i.e., actors are playing the part of two men playing a part. Going further, when it comes to Cage’s performance, he is playing a man who is still deeply hurting from the loss of his son – a hurt so deep that he’s inadvertently isolated himself from everyone around him – but he still has to find a way to act through that pain in order to successfully play the role of the life-loving carefree Castor Troy. It’s evident in the scene where Archer’s version of Troy is in the midst of a prison riot, and in between laughing uproariously and bellowing “I’m Castor Troy!” he is actually sobbing; or later, in Troy’s pad surrounded by his crime family, someone asks him how he knows so much about Sean Archer, so he confesses, “I sleep with his wife.” And as everyone around him laughs, and though Cage is laughing, too, he's just as conflicted about it as he seems genuinely amused by the irony. That right there is a perfect summation of the interesting parallelisms that Face/Off presents: whether Archer is himself, or masquerading as Castor Troy, he’s always acting like a man who is okay, and he’s not.

ON RIGHT: Uh…Sean Archer, also. Kind of. Sometimes. Everything character-based above applies. Especially the corpse thing.

In a film where there are two lead roles but still four major performances, sadly, one of those performances by one of those lead actors was going to end up being the weakest, and that dishonor falls to John Travolta’s take on Sean Archer. To be clear, there’s nothing inherently wrong with his version of “the good guy” – it’s just that compared to Cage’s typically more-manic performances, or even when Travolta is up against his own take on Castor Troy, this version of Archer has little to do beyond walk around, look haunted, and shout at Margaret Cho. He does have a scene or two where he gets to offer some dynamism, but for the most part he just seems like that tight-ass at the office who is really wound up and abrupt. It’s okay though, because there’s only so much insanity one film can take before it ends up becoming something you watch in a film theory course, and so Travolta allows himself to play it low-key, knowing that it’s going to make his major transition from hero to villain that much more jarring and effective and a hell of a lot of fun.

THE BAD GUY(S)(!)

ON TOP: Castor Troy, fraternal twin brother of Pollox. Explosives enthusiast. Eater of peaches. Deviant of sexuality. Dove-flock-be’er-arounder.

Between his weird gay masseuse rumors, his awful career choices over the last twenty years, his controversial religion, and his delightful head-stuttering “Adele Dazeem” boner from that one year’s Oscars ceremony, John Travolta’s credibility has plummeted significantly – especially compared to his heyday when he was one of the most dependable and sought-after performers in Hollywood; he was handsome, energetic, professional, and kind. Because of that, it’s easy to forget just how fun he was capable of being. And speaking of fun, no one is having more of it than he is as Castor Troy. Though he has very little villainous screen-time in his career (he played another notable antagonist in John Woo’s Broken Arrow [1996]), he seemed to enjoy going for broke here, because there’s not one piece of scenery left unchewed by his unhinged, almost operatic performance. Whatever low levels to which his career has sadly devolved, Travolta will always be one cool-ass, cigarette-smoking, jazz-step dancing motherfucker.

ON BOTTOM: Uh…Castroy Troy, also. Shit.

Nicolas Cage, I have a question: where the fuck did this version of you go? What happened to the guy who used to utterly transform with his performances that he actually made audiences squirm in their seats while also delighting an entire generation of Youtubers?

Though Cage begins the film as the villain before becoming the hero, boy, during the time when he’s actually Castor Troy in both mind and body, it is a thing to behold. From gaping mouths to flamboyant delivery, Cage is all over this role with relish. It’s almost a shame that the switcheroo-based Face/Off hadn’t actually done its own switcheroo behind the scenes and switched the two leading men’s roles, so that Cage could have instead spent the majority of his screentime as the villain. Although at a running time of nearly 2.5 hours, perhaps that’s just too much Cage insanity for one film. (Having read that back, yeah, that’s a dumb thing to say.) Face/Off isn’t even out of the opening credits sequence and Cage is already hamming it up as a priest, head-banging to “Hallelujah” and grabbing the ass of a certainly underage choir singer. Once you stop to realize that Cage’s priest outfit has NOTHING to do with the plot, you will realize two things: Castor Troy is a maniac and Face/Off is incredible.

 THE CASUALTIES

No tally for good guys versus bad guys because give me a break – YOU try categorizing who counts as good guys and bad guys when the good guys and bad guys switch natures back and forth. Overall, there are 33 shootings, 3 dead by conflagration, 2 dead by various body trauma, one dead via harpoon gun, and one dead by a “whoopsie!” sniper’s bullet.

THE BEST KILL

Troy gets things going by shooting an undercover FBI agent in the gut who was pretending to be a stewardess, after of course he posited to her: “If I let you suck my tongue, would you be grateful?” Following this rather bloodthirsty execution, Troy looks at arch nemesis Sean Archer and shrugs in a manner of which Larry Fine would have been immensely proud.

THE DAMAGE

Sean Archer: an off-the-mark bullet through the shoulder intended for him, but which ends up in his son. Talk about a hole in two! He also undergoes: multiple prison fights; a bullet to the shoulder by his real daughter; major back and belly flops; a drop through a glass ceiling and a shard of glass into his side; an exploding speedboat blowing him onto shore; and several sucker-punches and body-hits with various metal pipes.

Castor Troy: a jet turbine slams him into Comaland; stabbed in the thigh by his fake daughter; his own glass-ceiling plummet and speedboat explosion; a pretty nasty and spiteful self-inflicted face-cutting; stabbed in leg with harpoon; and that same harpoon driven into his belly.

THE BAD GUY’S COMEUPPANCE

Only in Hollywood could Sean Archer and Castor Troy still be standing by film’s end, so when John Travolta finally meets his long-overdue harpoon, the audience gratefully lets out a collective sigh of relief, because based on the sheer amount of shoot-outs and chase scenes and explosions and broken glass already witnessed, they’ve been watching this film for, in John Woo time, the last nine years.

THE LINE

“I’d like to take his face…………………………………………………………………..off.”

“Dress up like Halloween, and ghouls will try to get in your pants.”

“DIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!”

THE VERDICT

In some ways, action cinema died a little on the day Face/Off was released in theaters all the way back in the realm of 1997. Not since then, in spite of all the giant robots and leather-clad dominatrix prostitutes and all the winking/nudging aimed at the camera, has an action film of such sheer gonzo appeal, massive entertainment value, and littered with career-high watermark performances hit theaters. Sadly, John Woo’s American career wouldn’t last much longer, as he would go on to make the critical and box-office disappointment Windtalkers (2002) before hightailing it back to his native China to make more serious-minded films.

Face/Off is bombastically stupid. But it’s also harmlessly and relentlessly entertaining. John Woo has thrown everything at the wall to see what sticks, and he does so with a praiseworthy Billy Mumphrey level of cockeyed optimism. The good news is...everything sticks. But there’s still one little niggling thought that has the potential to fester in the far corner of more learned action-film-fans’ minds whenever they sit down for an annual viewing. And it’s the notion that Face/Off's script had been knocking around Hollywood desks for years and years before it was finally greenlit…and at one point, instead of Cage and Travolta, it saw the potential first on-screen pairing of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone. (Yeah, that slight quiver you just felt in your pants? That’s exactly what this column is all about.) What that signifies is that the importance of the casting for these two roles had been a major selling point since the minute this project caught someone’s eye, and even though taking Face/Off as we know it and implanting those two action megastars into either role, whether they were playing hero and then villain or villain and then hero, would have been the stuff of cinematic heart attack, the Face/Off that eventually came to be is just too good to sacrifice – for anything, or anyone.

CHUCK (2017)

The boxing movie is coming dangerously close to eclipsing the baseball movie as the most prominent sport depicted in cinema. There have been the major or minor classics (most of them starring Sylvester Stallone), the very okay (starring…Sylvester Stallone) to the downright pitiful (um….yep). But between the first and most recent Rocky/Creed films, there have been the well-made and sappy Cinderella Man, the well-made but overwrought Million Dollar Baby, and…whatever Grudge Match was. (Besides terrible). They have been founded on true stories, semi-true stories, or complete works of fiction. What sets Chuck off from the pack is that it’s a boxing film that doesn’t focus much on boxing, instead spending its time focusing on lead pugilist Chuck Wepner, whose reputation as a “bleeder” in the boxing world, as well as his somewhat stunted presentation (Whoo! New Jersey!) would inspire Stallone not just to write Rocky, but to fashion his Rocky Balboa character after him. And that’s where Chuck’s conflict comes into play. While one might argue that every boxing film is about your hero fighting him or herself, this more obviously plays out when he or she fights an insurmountable foe by film’s end, declaring victory either in or out of the ring. Instead, Chuck looks at Chuck, the man, not Chuck, the boxer. It looks at a man suddenly struggling with his own identity after the fictionalized version of him has been washed across silver screens and earned a multitude of Academy Awards. Chuck doesn’t culminate in that final fight against the insurmountable foe because the insurmountable foe he fights the entire film is himself – his demons, his reckless lifestyle, his selfishness, and his sense of worth.

Chuck features an eclectic ensemble of actors, all of whom do absolutely phenomenal work, from the lead performance by Liev Schreiber all the way down to comedian Jim Gaffigan, who appears only in a handful of scenes. Character actor Ron Perlman, face shaved and beneath a bald cap, delivers a small performance that allows him to go beyond just being Ron Perlman. Elizabeth Moss, too, excels as Wepner’s wife, Phyllis, nailing both the Jersey accent as well as the attitude. And then there’s Naomi Watts, nearly unrecognizable beneath the wig and the fake boobs, stealing every scene in which she appears. (And yes, Stallone – or rather, Chuck’s version of Stallone – also appears, portrayed by Morgan Spector, who nails the actor’s voice and intonation, but not quite the look...mullet notwithstanding.)

Chuck’s tone, too, helps set it off, as right off the bat it’s clearly more interested in being an American Hustle-style boxing film rather than just another overly dramatic story about the successful underdog. Marrying together genuine footage from Wepner’s career, along with recreations seamlessly weaved within, Chuck tells a story that you think might be familiar because you know the Rocky series by heart, but by film’s end, you’ll realize you don’t know anything about the real fighter who went the distance.

Despite the impressive ensemble, Chuck is one of those films that’s easy to write off before giving it a chance – “inspired by a true story” has become the new go-to for marketing films that have even a casual connection to reality – but Chuck impresses with its excellent performances and its reliance on a boxer’s fight against himself rather than a larger, meaner foe. It’s not taking things as seriously as the best Rocky films did, but it doesn’t pull any punches, either.