#2: INVASION U.S.A. (1985)

America wasn't ready...but HE was!

A group of communist guerrillas from Latin America, led by head commie Mikhail Rostov, invade the United States of America during the busy Christmas season and begin causing carefully constructed chaos throughout Florida communities. The CIA appeal to former colleague and retiree Matt Hunter, who trifled with Rostov on a past mission, to track down and neutralize his arch nemesis. Hunter, long out of the game, refuses, citing he's already spent enough time in the field dealing with death—that he had the chance to neutralize Rostov permanently, but was denied the authorization by his suit-wearing superiors. "He's your problem now," Hunter says, ending the meeting. Little does anyone know that Rostov is on his way to Hunter's isolated home in the swamp, along with a group of henchmen, to kill him, as Rostov considers him to be the only real possible threat to his country-wide domination. Hunter survives Rostov's attack, but his pet armadillo isn't so lucky, so Hunter sets off on a path of bearded destruction, chasing down and stabbing leads one at a time, until he comes face to face with the Russian brains behind the communist operation. Entire armies showdown in the streets of Miami, Christmas trees are bazooka'ed, shopping malls are destroyed, and men are metaphorically (and literally) castrated by the dozen. Hunter knows Rostov all too well—knows that he must be stopped, or else the United States will fall to the invading threat. Hunter knows that it's time to act. He knows that retirement's over, and it's time to strap on the uzis. He knows, simply, that...

It's...time.

Invasion U.S.A. was a friends-and-family affair—written by Chuck Norris alongside his brother, Aaron (who worked in creative capacities on many of Chuck's films, mostly as director, including another Norris achievement, The Hitman), and frequent collaborator James Bruner (who is credited to the screenplays for Chuck vehicles An Eye for an Eye, two Missing in Action entries, and The Delta Force). This team of writers, along with their Missing in Action director Joseph Zito (Dolph Lundgren's Red Scorpion), managed to create not just essential yearly Christmas viewing, but the most insane film in Chuck Norris' filmography. If Invasion U.S.A. is any indication of the darkness that dwells within Chuck Norris, then it's a damn shame he didn't write more of his own starring vehicles.

Because this guy...is pissed. And it shows.

Invasion U.S.A. is brutal and remorseless, but not in that wink-wink/nudge-nudge, one-man-army-movie kind of way. While it is fun (this thing must've provided a neutron-bomb-sized adrenaline rush to audiences during its initial release), really, it's the passage of time that's transformed Invasion U.S.A. from a mid-'80s curiosity into an altogether different experience, heightened by thirty years of changing sensibilities and evolving diplomatic relations.

Very much like the John Wick of its time, the plot of Invasion U.S.A. is built upon a very shaky and somewhat silly premise, and headlined by an automaton-like killing machine who appears to feel no empathy at all for his victims; both films even suggest that it was the death of a pet which spurred our heroes into action. But while both films are certainly fun, they're also taking their silly concepts 100% seriously. The viciousness in Invasion U.S.A. is far less Demolition Man and far more Out for Justice—the kind of violence that triggers revulsion rather than rejuvenation. Cocks are shot off, cocaine chutes are jammed up prostitutes' noses, men bleeding out on the ground are unceremoniously shredded by uzis, and adolescent refugees are shot down with automatic weapons. With that breakdown being a combination of efforts by both the hero and the villain, one might notice that their shared sadistic nature progresses toward blurring that line which separates the natures of good and evil. And that's perfect, because action films seldom do that.

Obvious action traditions aside, Invasion U.S.A. also feels like one of the most interesting and unorthodox horror films probably ever made. And all the credit in the world goes to director Zito for this aesthetic, being that he is the same man who birthed upon the horror-loving audience two paramount titles in the slasher flick sub-genre: Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter and its twin-sister, The Prowler.

Invasion U.S.A. is Friday the 13th: Hunter's Revenge. The decimation of mankind at Matt Hunter's hands isn't lighthearted and it's not done for kicks. This isn't Arnold throwing knives into some dude's chest and telling him to "stick around" with a wink and a smile. This isn't Carl Weathers asking, "How do you like your ribs?" before destroying someone with a flamethrower. This is Chuck Norris sadistically killing legions of men while offering "puns" tantamount to "I am about to take your life the fuck away from you" or "Your final moments will be spent looking into the eyes of the man who snuffed the last breath from your pitiless body" ...or sometimes saying nothing at all. Like Jason Voorhees or Michael Myers, Matt Hunter is the masked maniac popping up from an impossible nowhere to separate a man's life from his chi, his beard acting as his mask, his open denim shirt serving as his gnarled highway of an exposed spine. And every invading guerrilla terrorist is the promiscuous teenager, or the big-mouthed town local, or the hapless cop who unknowingly steps into the maniac's rage-filled path. A commie firing a bazooka at a Christmas tree becomes indistinguishable from a nubile teen peeling off her gigantic '80s tennis sweater and demanding that her boyfriend enter her immediately, but only after they've pitched-tent a mile into the woods of Camp Crystal Lake or forced open the back door of an abandoned house in the town of Haddonfield, Illinois. The camera no longer follows along with the hero and watches, from his point of view, as he dispatches all the underlings sent his way. That feeling of alarm the audience might feel for the hero has instead been replaced by an unmistakably scare-tinged inevitability that henchman #37 is toast—not if, but when, and definitely how. This time, the camera stays with those underlings, or even the main baddie, as they maneuver slowly around corners and through dark alleys. Only then will Hunter pop up, double-gripping 9mm Micro Uzis, leaving the audience startled as they wonder the same last thought that also bubbled to the surface in the minds of Hunter's soon-to-be-victims: "Where the hell did he come fr—?" Much like every infamous masked movie maniac you can conjure, Matt Hunter takes lives with an array of different weapons, starting with his automatics, continuing with confiscated explosives, and ending with two already incredibly deadly weapons merged to become one—because it's in his nature, because it's his namesake, and because, despite his anthropomorphic shape, he bares nothing in common with humankind.

Between Norris' writing and Zito's direction, there are incredibly strong connotations pertaining to a pro-far-right ideology, and with this film being released at the height of Reaganism (a time during which two emphatic lessons were taught: be afraid of Russia, and buy lots of shit), that's not surprising. If we're allowed to delve deeply into the genetic code of Invasion U.S.A. (and maybe we shouldn't), the implication on display here is amusing both from an ironic standpoint, but also kind of a thematic one, though recklessly simplified: should the Reagan capitalist era ever result in America's potential evisceration, we, the people, won't have the ability or tenacity to help ourselves. We'll be shot down in shopping malls and during outdoor fiestas. We won't be able to trust cops (topical!) or the coast guard or the army, because the enemy will be wearing their uniforms. We won't even be safe placing the star at the top of our Christmas tree. Our only hope will be one man—a man who lost his identity working for the government, and who now lives out in the middle of nowhere, away from anything close to civilization, subsisting on a diet of fried frogs, with an adorable armadillo and a fellow gator-wrangling partner, John Eagle, his only companions. That is who will save us: the man who renounces everything about our America except when it comes to eliminating the motherfuckers trying to take her over.

But Invasion U.S.A. doesn't need just big, dumb, and on-the-nose tactics to be pro-America. It ably circumvents not-so-subtle approaches and fills its smaller moments with additional overly patriotic sentiments, some so mundane they could be understandably overshadowed. In the film's first introduction to Matt Hunter, he chides his friend John Eagle for working under the table while collecting social security, snidely suggesting that the IRS wouldn't care for that. The first appearance of McGuire, the news reporter character (Melissa Prophet), has her railing against government officials attempting to censor her journalistic rights "as protected by the First Amendment," at which one of those same officials only wryly smiles, the inevitable Patriot Act—something you just know our government had been wanting to establish for a long time—a tiny seed in his mind. In a scene where Rostov sits out in plain view at an outdoor bar as patrons loudly discuss the ensuing invasion, he overhears someone blame it on the amount of immigrants coming to America, remarking, "It was only a matter of time before it happened here," even as the enemy sits immediately among them wearing Florida whites. And in the shopping mall sequence where Hunter eventually battles a group of henchmen, which in retrospect comes off sillier than The Blues Brothers, a well-meaning shopper notices a plain-clothes terrorist leave behind a shopping bag (a hidden explosive) and goes to absurd lengths, even as the terrorist begins full-on sprinting the hell away from him—even as a security guard begins to pursue the fleeing man, signifying that something is clearly wrong—all to make sure the man gets back the package he'd "accidentally" left behind, because god damn it, Americans are good people.

That Rostov's attack takes place during Christmastime isn't attempting to homage certain action expectations, being that the yuletide-infused Lethal Weapon and Die Hard wouldn't be released, respectively, for another two and three years. It was less about having a superfluous setting and more about hammering home the idea that the communist Mikhail and his guerrillas weren't just invading American shores, but were attacking American values. In this two-minute attack sequence, our antagonists manage to enact the basic tenets of communism by disbanding the family unit, denouncing consumerism, and destroying religion, all committed simultaneously with a single shot, and by one flatbed truck filled with pissed-off terrorists in leather jackets. Firing a rocket launcher through an outdoor Christmas tree and into a house where a family is lovingly bickering over decorations surpasses all forms of subtlety, but look no further than how this attack-on-Christmas sequence ends: with the terrorists packing up their rocket launchers and getting the hell out of there, while Zito lets the camera linger on the aftermath. Families tear out of homes screaming in fear, kids are crying and running down the street; everyone is attempting to reassemble and make sure father, mother, sister, brother—the nuclear family—are present and accounted for. The bad guys are gone, so the scene should be over—the film should be moving on to the next set-piece—but Zito isn't letting his terrorized Floridian families off the hook that easily, all the while pulling the rug out from under his audience's feet; they'd just enjoyed a silly scene of silly movie carnage, but now he's forcing them to endure the ramifications of its consequences. He captures every cry and every flee of terror. Zito pulled a similar trick in his Friday the 13th: an overhead shot where all the bodies from Jason Voorhees' latest night-time massacre are packed up into ambulances and carted away, with the police cars and helicopters following close behind, their flashing blue lights and chopping rotors leaving Crystal Lake bathed in darkness and eerie quiet. In Friday, this beautiful shot conveys how quickly a setting of such madness and violence could go quiet in seconds, as if nothing ever happened—something to be swept under the rug by bureaucrats and forced-forgotten by Crystal Lake citizens until it happens again (which it will). Though Zito captures the same aftermath of an attack in his Invasion U.S.A., it's for different reasons, and with a far less subtle point: to hammer home the knowledge that not only can this happen—and that it will, and quite easily—but when it does, it's going to be really really really bad.

In typical Cannon Films fashion, a sequel to Invasion U.S.A. called "Night Hunter" was planned, and a poster was printed that promised Chuck Norris would return as the titular hunter. Sadly, this sequel's iteration never became more than a poster, as Norris declined to participate. The script was slightly reworked (though maintaining the character of Matt Hunter) and soon became Avenging Force, starring Michael Dudikoff of the American Ninja series—interestingly, the same series which had originally been a potential starring vehicle for Chuck Norris. That unmistakable waft of disappointment you may be feeling—"what could have been?"—lasts only so long, for though Avenging Force is its own kind of ridiculous, gone was the hard-edged approach and the anger (as well as director Zito, replaced by American Ninja helmer Sam Firstenberg). In its place was the lighter silliness Cannon Films had pretty much patented by that point in the late '80s. Seeing Norris return in a potential Matt Hunter franchise will always be the stuff of dreams, for his involvement in a sequel to a film that he wrote might have inspired more of the same—more inhuman heroes, more unflinching pain, more bloodthirsty patriotism, more rocket-sized erections for these United States.

In this column that celebrates the kind of action films now extinct, a paradox has manifested, in that even when these celebrated films were being made, none of them looked anything like Invasion U.S.A.: villains didn't have nightmares of the hero, the hero didn't lack humanity while severely diminishing the populace, the potential love interest wasn't reduced to a chick hurling a metal trashcan lid at the hero's head as he walked away from her in outright dismissal. Invasion U.S.A. exists in a tiny tiny class by itself, one in which the hero is clearly suffering a detachment from reality, and who kills just as many people as an army of bad guys do, but whose efforts are supported by the same audience preconditioned to accept that Chuck Norris is an American hero.

THE "GOOD" GUY

Matt Hunter. Gator wrangler. Air boat driver. Denim lover. Unwavering patriot. Open-shirt sporter. Diner check stiffer. Sci-fi fan. Armadillo owner. Former armadillo owner. Fried frog enthusiast. Completely out of his goddamned mind.

Some factions of the internet might be surprised to hear that Chuck Norris was actually pretty famous before a bunch of armchair comedians made up some "facts" about him and plastered them on t-shirts from Red Bubble. Shocking though it may be, it's true—not just because he became an action hero icon during the 1980s and followed that into the 1990s, but also because he was an accomplished black-belt in karate and sparred with none other than Bruce Lee in both real life as well as the feature film The Way of the Dragon...where Chuck played the villain(!). Norris being reimagined by millennials as a pop culture curiosity with godlike powers was mildly amusing until the realization set in that this sudden idol worship was likely and solely spawned by his long-running television show Walker, Texas Ranger, which didn't exemplify Norris at his best, along with the vague awareness that, yeah, at some point he had done a couple action films like those other guys Stallone and Van Damme. Ironically, even though it's claimed by IMDB (so let's believe it!) that Invasion U.S.A. is the second most popular-selling video unit in MGM's history behind only Gone with the Wind, it's this very film that many current audiences haven't seen where Norris does seem to exhibit those same inexplicable godlike powers that have since become celebrated. Though in recent years Norris hasn't really gone out of his way to discuss any of his previous film work, having spent most of his post-Hollywood life talking about Jesus and exercise equipment, it wouldn't be surprising to uncover that Chuck doesn't like to discuss Invasion U.S.A. because he probably looks back on it as that movie where he went too far. Even to the most hardened action fan, such a defamation wouldn't exactly sound nuts. Invasion U.S.A. isn't just thrilling or brutal or exceptionally violent, but it can, at times, feel a little dangerous, as if everyone involved in the production, from the screenwriters to the director to the actors, were furious about the state of international affairs, and fearful that the most bloated and cartoonishly overstated boogeyman of all time—communism—might breach American shores and infect its citizens with the notion that cutting someone's throat for that extra buck might, in fact, be a bad idea.

Speaking of furious, Chuck Norris' Matt Hunter is out of his mind, an unsmiling, unfeeling, unfazed killing machine. In one scene, he's saddened and infuriated to see that a carnival filled with families and children has been wiped out by the terrorists with no one surviving; in the next scene, he's on a motel bed smiling widely at a cheesy movie featuring UFOs. Sure, he may be the "hero" in the sense that a bunch of "bad guys" invade and Hunter sends them packing...to the tomb—the audience demands this and Norris delivers—but there are times when you actually start to feel a little bad for all the soldiers for whom Chuck books one-way tickets to hell via passage down fiery, thousand-foot razor-blade slides, the flames crawling across the hapless soldiers finally extinguished only after they drown in their destined oceans of vomit. Dying at Matt Hunter's hands is to not only die slowly and painfully, but it's to die with utter shame. It's to die knowing that your entire life spent believing you were a man was ousted as a lie in your final moments while the blackness rolled over your eyes.

Chuck has gone kind of crazy-conservative over the years, spurred into especial craziness during the Obama years (he warned of "1,000 years of darkness" if he won his 2012 re-election), and while it's always best to separate the man from the myth, his politically conservative views force you to reevaluate many of the films that he made during the most transformative time in modern America. Upon doing so, you'll realize that, say, in films like Invasion U.S.A., Chuck not only loves America, but he will balls-out lose his fucking mind and embrace his inner Ted Bundy by way of the T-800 and obliterate anyone who dares soil her purple mountain majesty. In much the same way that a writer inadvertently, even if minutely, inserts his inner-self into every character or conflict he creates, the actor infuses his inner-self into every character he plays. Would it be absurd to suggest that Chuck Norris, actor and co-writer who once acted under the stage name Chuck Slaughter, under his big-grin surface, is an unfeeling, remorseless killing machine? Of course it would, let's not shit ourselves. But would we be remiss in refusing to consider that maybe Chuck Norris might be just the least bit...off?

Only time will tell.

THE BAD GUY

Mikhail Rostov. Communist. Dedicated castrator. Cuban refugees assassinator. America hater. Christmas destroyer. Recurrent nightmare sufferer. TV smasher. Ultimate anti-drug spokesman.

Richard Lynch has played the villain for nearly all of his life, beginning with 1973's Scarecrow and ending with 2012's The Lords of Salem. (The actor died that same year.) Lynch has always managed to exude a sinister appearance, but it was an incident that occurred in 1976, at the height of the psychedelic drug craze, that forever changed his life. (What's commonly known is that after dosing himself with LSD, he inexplicably set himself on fire, but what has never been substantiated is the legend that Lynch purposely set himself on fire to kill the bugs he'd been hallucinating were crawling all over his body.) Following a period of facial reconstruction surgery and emotional recuperation, Lynch finally got up the confidence to seek other roles, only his unusual appearance would ensure that he played either the villainous, or the untrustworthy and unlikeable, for the rest of his career. Modestly, and appropriately, he would also become an impassioned anti-drug advocate, using his own tragedy to personify what can happen to someone with a bright and promising future when messing around with that d-word stuff.

With Mikhail Rostov, Lynch presents the most fascinating and nuanced of all the villains to be featured in TTMM. There's no lacking of the dastardly and the maniacal here, that's for sure, but there's another side to Rostov that is actually pretty refreshing in this genre, and it's this: Lynch's Rostov is openly afraid of the hero. And yeah, one might argue that every villain is afraid of the hero on some silent subconscious level, but for Rostov, it's really not necessary to go that deep down the rabbit hole. The audience knows Rostov is afraid of Matt Hunter because they've already seen the nightmare he's had about him—and not just one nightmare, but several. Recurring. And they all conclude the same way: with Hunter kicking Rostov square in the face haha. Think about this for a second: Rostov is not only so terrified of Hunter that he's suffering nightmares about him, but these nightmares end with him only being physically harmed. He's not being caught and slowly tortured to death, or looking down the barrel of Matt Hunter's gun and awaiting an inevitable execution. On a fear scale of one through ten, with ten being "completely petrified," Rostov being kicked in the face ranks a fully engorged seventeen. THAT'S how scared he is, so much that he awakes from every nightmare bathed in cold sweat and shaking. So much that his cohorts burst into his room and ask, "The dream again?" And Rostov corrects them: "The nightmare."

From an actor's standpoint, that's a pretty ballsy approach to a character—especially the villain, and especially in this genre. An action director will tell you that many concessions have to be made when it comes to presenting any one or several action heroes. Forget the fact that it's all fiction, and that no audience member in his or her right mind should be taking the images and depictions on screen seriously: at no time can one action star look more manly, or fearless, or intelligent than the other. Fight scenes are choreographed so that, even if it's inevitable one of them must lose, both men come out looking strong and capable. This was and continues to be the mindset. Action stars take this away from movie sets like baggage, paranoid that their fans will look upon them with disapproval in real life because they lost a fight in a movie. When it came time for Lynch's interpretation of the character on the page, he not only embraced this unheard of approach to a villain, but he brought to the role a real sense of phobia and vulnerability. He willingly became afraid of the hero, instead of exhibiting that faux macho bravado spurred either by sociopathy or narcissism that's become so common among celluloid villains. Lynch was a smarter actor for having embarked on such a direction, knowing that even if he was going to be taking on a more typical villain, he was going to play him in such a way that the bad guy contained multiple layers beyond merely being "the bad guy."

THE CASUALTIES

The Bad Guys

John Eagle gets the honor of the first couple bad-guy kills, blowing away two dudes with a shotgun. One bad guy is mowed down by Hunter's gigantic American bronco. Three shopping-mall invaders are cut in half with 9mm Micro Uzis. One terrorist crashes and explodes in a stolen pick-up truck. Three terrorists masquerading as American soldiers are shot full of lead. Four guys are blown up by their own suitcase bomb. Five more fake soldiers are shot down by an assault rifle. Nikko the henchman is shot directly in the face by his own held gun. Three more guys are blown to smithereens with their own explosive. One helicopter pilot is blown up by a rocket launcher. Four guys are shot by double Micro Uzis. Two guys are shotgunned in half—through the wall. One guy's belly meets a knife...very quickly. All told, 32 commie bastards bleed red, turn white, and rot until blue.

The Good Guys

A group of stranded Cubans, numbering somewhere around a dozen, are mowed down by an array of gunfire. One coked-out dame gets a cocaine chute jammed into her brain and then thrown out a window. One would-be drug dealer gets his manhood shot off at point blank range. Two drug-dealer body guards get shot in the chest. John Eagle takes an assault rifle spray to the body. Two randy beach-going teens are executed in the head and the ambiguous. One Christmas tree is blown to bits, along with the family who owns it. Really, one entire block of houses gets blown to Christmas cheer. Four Cuban party goers are executed with shotguns. Three mall shoppers are shot down while two explode from a Christmas present bomb. Another guy gets his manhood shot off at point-blank range. Two butchers (?) get mowed down by gunfire. An unknown number of children—children!—perish in an off-screen carnival attack. Two rent-a-cops get blown to hell. One armadillo succumbs to complications from an exploding swamp house.

All in all, the bad guys actually kill more people (36 confirmed) than the good guys*, and that rarely happens. Invasion My Heart!

*The final battle sequence between the U.S. military and Rostov's soldiers is ridiculous non-stop carnage and difficult to analyze for kill counts. Simply put: both sides win/lose in equal measures.

THE BEST KILL

A group of terrorist soldiers rig explosives inside a suitcase and leave it outside the main entrance of a church. The terrorists reconvene in the alley at their mini control center. The lever makes its appearance; the switch is thrown.

No explosion.

Above them on the roof of the building, Hunter appears, complete with triumphant musical sting, impossibly holding the suitcase filled with the church steps' explosives at which the terrorists hadn't stopped looking. Hunter watches without amusement as the men hit the unresponsive switch over and over.

"Not working, huh?" he asks. He tosses the suitcase of explosives down at their feet, his eyes hardened with pure insanity as he touches together the ends of the two trigger wires. "Now it will."

Cue explosion—and mangasm.

THE DAMAGE

That little trickle of blood on Hunter's head?

That's about the size of it.

THE BAD GUY'S COMEUPPANCE

Following the extended finale in which Rostov creeps around an abandoned office building with a rocket launcher perched on his shoulder, Hunter makes his presence known, seemingly materializing out of nowhere like the fucking Phantom of the Opera, and steps up beside him. He unleashes his own rocket launcher, aimed at waist level, and seethes: "It's...time." Rostov growls in fury, turns to take his shot...and gets blown into a spray of blood, bones, belly jelly, heads, and one single foot-filled boot...all in different directions. It's not only the end of Rostov, but it's the end of the film. No character wrap-up, no final moments of relief or levity. Man explodes; black unfolds; credits roll.

You rule so hard, Invasion U.S.A.

THE LINE

So, so, so many good lines in this. One cannot stand to represent all; it's simply unfair.

"If you come back in here, I'm going to hit you with so many rights, you're going to beg for a left."

"You're beginning to irritate me."

"Not working, huh? Now it will."

(sticking a bomb onto a truck of terrorists) "Did you lose this?"

And, of course:

"It's...time."

THE VERDICT

Invasion U.S.A., while a wildly entertaining, bizarre, hardcore, and somewhat disturbing experience, is the black sheep of Chuck Norris' career. Long known for being "the good guy" in the sense that he mostly spent his career seeking reparations from war criminals, going on search-and-rescue missions for fellow soldiers, or reducing the worthlessness of asthmatic children (RIP Jonathan Brandis), Invasion U.S.A. is the film in which Chuck Norris full-on embraced his murderous persona. Perhaps inspired by the balls-to-the-wall direction in which the First Blood series seemed to be headed (though it was critical of America's involvement in the Vietnam War), Norris, too, designed a film to not only exemplify his skill for taking lives, but to also really cram down your throat that he fucking loves America, who is perfect just the way she is, and for whom NO ONE is going to cause strife...not on his watch.

#3: HARD TARGET (1993)

Don't hunt what you can't kill.

In historic Crescent City, men of little means and no hope are being hunted for sport, arranged by sociopath Emil Fouchon and his second-in-command Pik van Cleef. For the right price, the willing participant will be given a belt-strap filled with ten thousand dollars and ordered to follow only one guideline: run. Should the prey make it to the designated endpoint, he shall not only win the game, but also the cash in his belt—a ticket to a second chance. And all he has to risk is...his life. It's during one of these hunts where a homeless war veteran is felled by a hunter's arrow, and once it's become obvious that he's gone missing, his daughter, Natasha, comes to New Orleans to figure out what's become of him. It's there that she meets a poorly-dressed, mulleted, and nearly indecipherable local named Chance Boudreaux, whom she hires to guide her in traversing the criminal underbelly to find out once and for all what's happened to her father. They soon cross paths with a New Orleans police detective who seems hesitant to get involved, but does so only after learning that the institutions on which the police department depend may not just be corrupt, but in league with the very shadowy group of men she is investigating. It's not long after that the mystery of "the game" slowly starts to unravel, men are kicked across the world, and Chance Boudreaux slaps the head of his snake until it goes limp. Some men are sitting ducks; others are a HARD TARGET.

Hard Target was written by Chuck Pfarrer, also responsible for the loony Navy Seals, the awesome Darkman, and many other films that cause him cold shudders whenever someone whispers their titles even thousands of miles away (virusredplanetbarbwire uggggghhhhhhh), but the big reason behind Hard Target's "success" is a name infamous for high-testosterone, operatic, and completely unhinged action. A man who broke out in a big way on the international independent scene before coming to these American shores to make his domestic debut. So what director has bestowed upon us the most exaggerated western in history? Who has the fascination with doves, eye close-ups, unnecessary flips, trench coats, and post-production slow-motion?

Not who, but Woo. John Woo—the only director esteemed enough to appear twice in this top ten list of action absurdity is the crazyman also responsible for the number nine pick, Face/Off.

Hard Target was John Woo's first American film, and how that came to be has a couple different versions. Rumors abound it was Van Damme's urging that John Woo leave his native China to come and work on his first big American film (and this rumor is further perpetuated by Van Damme's own semi-autobiographical film JCVD). Other versions have it that it was Universal Pictures themselves who were courting the director, and that while Woo was receptive, he was actually pursuing Kurt Russell for the role of Chance Boudreaux (which not only would have been its own form of awesome—he already had the mullet and everything—but would seemingly put Van Damme's involvement in Woo's China-to-Hollywood migration in question). Added to that, Hard Target isn't groundbreaking just because it was the first American film of John Woo's career, but it was actually the first time an Asian filmmaker had directed what was considered a tentpole film for a major American studio. Because of this, during production, Universal execs were very nervous, being that one of their own had entrusted a multi-million dollar production to a director who spoke very little English, so it was requested that Hollywood superstar Sam Raimi, an executive producer on the picture, be on set in the event that he had to "take over" production—something that thankfully never happened.

A direct riff on the nearly 100-year-old short story "The Most Dangerous Game," which by 1993 had seen many interpretations, Hard Target appropriated the famous tale once again, this time as less of a satirical thriller and more as a western—right down to Boudreaux's "boots," his skill with a handgun (upside down though it may be), and his first on-screen appearance that has him sitting at a bar and the camera going in close on his eyes, which is not just a Woo trademark, but a western one. Take that, add the twangy guitar/finger-snaps score by Graeme Revell, the New Orleans storefronts indicative of an old west town, and that genre-defining battle of a few good versus many evil, and the western motif has never felt more at home. That the film is set in New Orleans solely to suit Van Damme's thick accent thankfully not only avoids handicapping Hard Target's western influences, but rather complements it quite well, in that it highlights the incompetence and corruption of the New Orleans police department (it wasn't often, in the western genre, that law enforcement were directly responsible for expunging the evil from their on-the-nose named town) while also heightening the economic disproportion that still exists in the Crescent City today.

Hard Target is immensely silly from beginning to end. A "guy" movie through and through, so much that the character of Natasha Binder (Yancy Butler) is painted to be utterly useless without the presence of a man to help her. She's not on screen for ten minutes before she's crying and getting slapped around by a group of thugs looking to rob and perhaps rape, opening the door for Van Damme to enter, destroy those men's limbs, and hand Natasha back her purse and admonish her for counting out her cash in public. In a "real" film, especially in the modern era where blockbusters like Mad Max: Fury Road are invading theaters with the inexplicably controversial notion that women can be pretty bad-ass, this kind of gross undervaluing of the female lead would be tantamount to misogyny, but in Hard Target, it's all for the best, as, no shit, it's Van Damme's name on the poster. That is why audiences have bought the tickets (this argument comes up again later), so that's what the filmmakers were going to provide. (It doesn't help that Butler appears to be on a heavy dose of lithium during her entire doe-eyed performance, anyway.)

Despite it being heavily inspired by the famous concept of one man hunting another for sport, the plot of Hard Target is the most inconsequential thing about it. Upon its initial theatrical release, even the most discerning critics and harshest reviews had no choice but to acknowledge the sheer spectacle of the film and the magnitude of the stunts, dismissive of the overall plot though they may have been. And in all honesty, had Van Damme, Henriksen, and these same gun battles and motorcycle stunts and explosions been surgically removed and implanted into an entirely different plot, it wouldn't have mattered. Nothing is really gained from the "man is the most dangerous game" concept beyond motivations for both our hero and our villain to eventually come head-to-head while taking a hundred lives in the process. That a group of rich men are selling organized murders of the poor eventually becomes nothing more than window dressing: Van Damme letting loose kicks and punches and gunshots and explosions would have sold any film in 1993. This time, it just so happened to be selling Hard Target.

THE GOOD GUY

Chance Boudreaux. Able seaman. Captain beater. Food critic. Deadbeat union member. Amateur detective-for-hire. Lifetime pedestrian. Bayou born-and-bred. Nephew to the oatmeal guy. Unlicensed punching bag. Doctor hater. Substitute masseuse. Snake wrangler.

Hard Target not only returns John Woo to the fold, but also our beloved Muscles from Brussels, who appeared here previously in the number six pick Universal Soldier. Following that 1992 display of macho bravado, Van Damme appeared in Nowhere to Run, offering an atypically understated performance, and provided a cameo as himself in the underrated Last Action Hero before donning the mullet, the trench coat, and the Timberlands of Chance Boudreaux. His take on the lone gunslinger with the mysterious past is as muted as one might expect—and cowboys certainly don't speak with a Belgian accent—but the posturing and bigger-than-life persona is certainly ever in place. Many of these western-hero characters were deeply flawed individuals shooting men through saloon windows not only because they were pretty pissed off and tired of everyone's shit, but because of that "r" word: redemption. Whether drunks, or aging, or guilty of some anonymous past indiscretion, they quite reluctantly embraced the honorary title of "hero." In Hard Target, Chance doesn't embrace that title due to any particular urge to redeem himself and make up for any especially haunting past sin—not only because the film begins and he's already clearly the hero, but because, frankly, the script for Hard Target ain't tryin' that hard. This is evident at the end when Fouchon demands to know why Boudreaux began meddling in his affairs and Boudreaux responds it's because he was bored.

Chance Boudreaux apparently knows everyone in New Orleans, from ornery diner waitresses, to homeless men, to seedy pornography advertisers, to madams at brothels. To the more discerning viewer, it would seem that such infamy would violate the preordained rules of the mysterious gunslinger, especially with the conflict taking place on the streets of his very own home, rather than the streets of a town into which he had just ridden. But where Van Damme may lack as a gunslinger in external construction he makes up for thematically. He's got the mysterious past down, he's kind of a lowlife, and he inserts himself into the inner workings of law enforcement once he realizes that they're kind of infantile without him. Plus he rides a horse during the finale while shooting a bunch of dudes, you idiots.

Up to this point, Van Damme had opened several films that were designed around his impressive fighting style, which pertained to their own sub-genre of the action world, and which were all nearly identical in their plots: man who fights well is drawn hesitantly into a fighting scenario out of sense of revenge or necessity and eventually wins the day. These films—Bloodsport, Kickboxer, Lionheart—are entertaining for what they are, but sometimes audiences want more—more violence, that is. More grue, more death, more destruction. Universal Soldier would be the first film with Van Damme as the star where the fighting styles are dialed down and guns are finally placed into his hands. After the one-two punch of Universal Soldier and then Hard Target, audiences were delighted to be seeing what they were seeing: Van Damme not just high-kicking dudes across Planet Earth, but seeing him whip out a gun and finishing his victims' descent into space.

In the mid-'90s, Van Damme was at the absolute height of his superstardom. In fact, Hard Target would prove to be the beginning of the end of his box office domination. Following on Hard Target's heels would be the first of three collaborations with filmmaker Peter Hyams, beginning with Timecop, the last film with Van Damme as the lead to make significant bank. While his immediate films to come would assure a modicum of silliness (Sudden Death is among the most entertaining of the Die Hard rip-offs), Hard Target would see Van Damme not just appearing in his most ridiculous film, and not at his most ridiculous looking, but would prove to be "the" film—the one in which the action hero idolized by genre fans would achieve the "one-man army" title and lay a record number of bad guys to waste, all while making the goofiest of faces every single solitary time he fired a gun.

THE BAD GUY

Emil Fouchon. Literal man hunter. Hyperbolic drug dealer. Cash slammer. Thompson Center Arms Contender wielder. Existentialist. The most infuriated pianist in existence.

Lance Henriksen is god of the b-movies and the greatest actor that will ever appear within these hallowed Murdered Men halls. The nicest man you have ever met is capable of playing the most sadistic, sociopathic villain this side of World War II. Long and better-known as having portrayed Bishop in Aliens, Ed Harley in several chapters of Pumpkinhead, Frank Black on cult television show Millennium, and "the Father" in personal favorite No Escape, Lance Henriksen can appear in the biggest piece of shit you've ever seen and make you glad you're watching it—that's the power behind his talent. He has been turning in extremely solid but mostly supporting character work ever since his first feature film appearance in Dog Day Afternoon back in the dark ages of 1975. Though his filmography lists a litany of titles that sound as unappealing as they likely are (his self-admitted "alimony movies"), there's one thing that can be guaranteed: no matter how many people in those films melt, or explode, or meet the teeth of aliens/mutant Bigfeet, Henriksen is going to be putting 100% into his performance as whatever good guy/bad guy/voice-over-only character that he's playing. He's as dedicated to his craft as they come, hailing from the old school of method-acting. Motherfucker was so in-tune that he for-realsies allowed himself to be set on fire in the third-act scene of Hard Target, during which the flames flared a bit more than anyone anticipated, forcing him to rip off his fiery coat and hurl it at the nearest wall..all while staying in character to complete the scene. That cool thing you did once and keep telling people about?

It will never be that cool.

What makes all the films featured in Top Ten Murdered Men so worthy of celebration is admittedly that delectable permeation of irony—that undercurrent of unintended humor that heightens the level of audience enjoyment. To be specific, would Hard Target have benefited from utilizing another performer as the lead (like Kurt Russell) who could not only display the kind of skillful choreography of which Van Damme was capable, but all while offering a solid performance free of the kind of foreign-tongued baggage that's come to define so many of our action stars? Sure, more than one person would argue that a stronger performance makes for a stronger film. But what kind of film needs to be strengthened? Which aspect would be ultimately reinforced? Would it benefit anyone at all if one could go back in time and start plugging stronger aspects into Hard Target, in effect creating a "better" film? Fuck no. Hard Target is a product of both purposeful and accidental sensibilities, a beautiful amalgamation of success and failure—and this more than includes the somewhat stunted performance by our leading split-doer. The legendary status that Hard Target has achieved has everything to do with the "shortcomings" of its own production.

While Henriksen is fully aware of the over-the-top nature of the story and that it's not to be taken seriously, he knows that the best way to contribute is to dial up his performance of Emil Fouchon way past eleven. If Boudreaux's arch nemesis plays the piano, then he's going to play the ever loving fucking shit out of that piano, slamming every key with a near-maniacal look of unbridled fury splayed across his face. If he's going to dismissively throw money at an obese underling, he's going to slam that money across his fat back so hard he may as well be trying to slam it through him. If someone has the audacity to die slowly in front of him of a snake bite, thereby sincerely inconveniencing him, he's going to step on the corpse-to-be's chest and growl, "I'll fuck you, and then I'll eat you" before suggesting that his men "die quieter." And if, near the end, Fouchon realizes that he's losing control over "the game," he's not just going to react in anger—he's going to spin disjointedly, surrounded by flames, bellowing at the wall, screaming indecipherably, grunting like an uncaged animal following years of vicious abuse. Saliva will spatter from his mouth as he screams primal threats into the air surrounding them all, pure ferocity emanating from his every fiber. "There isn't a country in the world I haven't fired a bullet in!" he screams. "You can't kill me! I'm on every battlefield!" Castor Troy was a cartoon villain, as was Andrew Scott and Manny Fraker before him. But Emil Fouchon feels dangerous, and the mythos of his character is deeply unsettling. As he makes it known in the film, Fouchon and co. have traveled throughout not just Louisiana, and not just the United States, but the entire world, setting up games of ritualized murder for the super rich. He's become super rich by selling not just men, but the opportunity to kill those men, to the wealthiest of sociopaths—people so bored with their vast fortunes that it takes controlled-setting murder to feel alive again. And in one particular scene when his client shows hesitation about satisfying their contract—shows immense unease at the mere idea of taking another man's life—Fouchon becomes incensed, ordering him to finish the job before walking away and muttering, "God, why didn't he just go fishing?" This is all because Fouchon feels nothing, no empathy whatsoever toward his fellow man. He's not just disappointed that his client won't take advantage of his delivered prey, but it actually enrages him, as if "the game" were just another everyday activity. His entire being is predicated on selling lives, and the notion that other people aren't as enthusiastic about such a thing doesn't just confound him, but infuriates him.

There's nothing ironically good about Henriksen's performance. Every seemingly silly thing is not a happy accident, nor is it going for one thing but inadvertently achieving something different. Henriksen's performance is by careful, distinctive design. For once, the actor playing the villain is fully in on the joke and embraces it to maximum effect.

In a move similar to that of Steven Seagal's during the post-production on Out for Justice, it was at Van Damme's orders that Henriksen's scenes be reduced in the final cut, as he was likely concerned about being upstaged in the very film where he played the lead role. This longer cut—known as the "John Woo workprint version"—has become long sought-after in the bootleg market and sadly has never materialized anywhere in any legitimate form.

From Wiki:

Van Damme went with his own editor to make his own edit of the film. Van Damme's version excises whole characters to insert more scenes and close-ups of his character Chance. When asked about this edit, Van Damme replied that, "People pay their money to see me, not to see Lance Henriksen."

While Van Damme's presence will always guarantee a certain attraction, Hard Target could have only benefited from further pure and unfiltered Lance Henriksen. Simply put, there's praise, there's hyperbole, and then there's truth: no one in the world could have played the role of Emil Fouchon with the same gravitas, the same bombastic approach, and lastly, the same sincerity.

Pik van Cleef. Number two of Emil Fouchon. Literal ear-lowerer. Scissors stabber. Heffer hater. Feelings considerer. Potential Irishman.

Arnold Vosloo was Mummy.

THE CASUALTIES

The Bad Guys

One motorcyclist shoots a gas can thrown at him (?) and turns into a full-on conflagration. One getaway driver and one motorcyclist receive bullets into their person. One motorcyclist gets his neck broken by an almighty boot. One motorcyclist takes several bullets before getting slammed head-on by another motorcycle. One henchman gets blown up by some exploding moonshine. One henchman gets pulverized by a shotgun...while in a helicopter...which was fired from a horse. One motorcyclist catches a gas can tossed his way before it's shotgunned, blowing him into beautiful smithereens and his motorcycle through a window. Two henchmen are literally shotgunned INTO fire. One henchman gets choked out with the butt of a shotgun before receiving a tremendous spin-kick to the face and is later shot nine times with a handgun. Another motorcyclist receives more of the same. One henchman gets an arrow through the neck. One leather-clad misogynist gets shot pointblank in the chest. One cowboy-clad henchman gets a dose of hot lead. Two more henchmen get double-handgunned. Three henchmen get riddled with bullets, the last of them falling down the stairs. Thee more henchmen, one of whom drops a grenade, get red holes blown in them. One henchman gets whipped in the face with a grenade wrapped in a shirt and killed by the shotgun stolen from his startled hands. van Cleef gets shot so many times even the NRA cringed from the excess and closed their Twitter account.

The Good Guys

One homeless man (a cameo from the film's screenwriter) and father to our damsel in distress is shot with painful looking arrows before drowning in a river. One corrupt doctor (the sheriff from Friday the 13th: Part 5—A New Beginning who says "it's Jason Voorhees!" and gets an ashtray thrown at him) gets shot in the eye through his door's peephole. One Vietnam veteran is hunted through the graveyard, but actually manages to take out the hunter who paid to kill him, before being executed in the street with an automatic weapon (during which a few innocent bystanders may or may not meet their ends.) One very obese games arranger gets the top of his head blown off at pointblank range via shotgun. Detective Mitchell (Candyman's Kasi Lemmons) gets sheared by a shotgun blast before taking several more MP4 shots to the chest.

THE BEST KILL

No contest. Boudreaux standing entirely up on a motorcycle leaking gasoline and heading straight for a Bronco full of bad guys, and then LEAPING over the entire vehicle in time to shoot them from behind and blow them the fuck up, not only takes the cake for best kill, but frankly, should be in every movie in existence.

Runner up goes to Boudreaux shooting Sven-Ole Thorsen far more times than the clip of his upside handgun allows—29 shots, to be exact—before delivering a completely unnecessary roundhouse kick to the face of the man whom, at that point, is quite obviously very dead.

THE DAMAGE

Boudreaux gets manhandled during the first act while doing some investigatory work. He's later punched in the face, cut on the arm, and beaten with a fiery 2x4. He also ends up in front of several explosions, none of which seem to faze him in any way beyond propelling him nearer to the next man he needs to shoot.

And in case you're wondering, Uncle Douvet (Wilford Brimley) gets stabbed with an arrow, but no one really gives a shit about this character, do they?

THE BAD GUY'S COMEUPPANCE

Boudreaux fires a pretty gnarly shotgun into Fouchon's shoulder, sending him flipping backwards across the room before rushing at him, delivering the most bad-ass jump kick of the film, followed by an array of kicks to the chest, punches to the face, and one grenade dropped down his pants. To his credit, Henriksen manages to upstage his own death sentence by at first laughing at what he assumes to be a dud of a grenade before seeing its spark ignite to blow him to confetti, punctuating his life with "oop!"

THE LINE

"Hunting season is over."

THE VERDICT

A parody of Hard Target would look exactly like Hard Target, and that's why it rules as hard as it does. What may not have been ludicrous in 1993 is very ludicrous now, and it only adds to the enjoyment. Van Damme delivers his most satisfying film in the sub-genre of absurd action, Henriksen provides an award-winning performance as the ultimate unhinged villain, and John Woo somehow manages to create spectacle that's even more absurd than that other film he made about the two men who switch faces, live, and spend two hours trying to kill each other with broken glass. Hard Target's original incarnation may have been sullied by the ego of one particular mullet-sporting high-kicker, but there's no denying that the finished product was a full-on bull's-eye.

#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.