R0BTRAIN's Bad Ass Cinema: The Bad Asses of 2008, Part 3

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The Bad Ass List Continues!

Well, the 2009 Oscars are behind us, but even though they’re gone I still have a lot of mixed feelings about them. Now don’t get me wrong, I absolutely loved the ceremony itself. I’ll admit to being highly skeptical of having Hugh Jackman hosting the show. I mean, after sitting through this show year after year, watching comedians do their shtick time in and time out, it seemed like a gimmick to have a huge star like Jackman hosting the program. I had forgotten though, about Jackman’s time on Broadway and had hugely underestimated the man’s talents as a showman. Jesus, that guy was hilarious and not only that, he nearly couldn’t be stopped when it came to entertaining the crowd. Sure, I could have done without the big number in the middle of the show, but otherwise I thought Jackman’s duties went off without a hitch.

As for the awards themselves though, I’m a bit indifferent. The snubbing of Dark Knight seemed to continue throughout the night, even if Heath Ledger did take home the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor. Even in the technical awards, which should have been a cinch for the film, an art film kept sneaking into each race, taking away awards from the movie I considered to be the best of the year.

Lastly, I think what left a little bit of a bad taste in my mouth was that Mickey Rourke didn’t win Best Actor. I know Milk was a good film and Sean Penn is exceptional in it, but there was an unquantifiable magic in Mickey’s performance and the Academy seemed to simply ignore it. There was real pain and sorrow that came out of Rourke in The Wrestler, but part of me also wants to think that the movie wasn’t pretentious enough for Oscar, and because of that the Academy simply had to go out of its way to honor Milk as much as it could without giving it the big awards that Slumdog Millionaire was up for. Still, the rest of the show was a really entertaining experience, even seemingly like an old school MTV Awards presentation at times.

Now, onto the films and characters that really deserve to be honored, I present…

The Bad Asses of 2008, Part 3

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9. Walt Kowalski, played by Clint Eastwood – Gran Torino

“Get off my lawn…”

It’s really amazing that even though he’s well into his seventies, Clint Eastwood can still pull in the crowds like nobody’s business. I mean really, the guy had his biggest opening ever with Gran Torino, and if this really ends up Eastwood’s final on-screen performance, then the man is going out in top fashion. Eastwood is awesome as the grumpy racist Kowalski, a man who has completely withdrawn from society and all of the people he knows, wanting to die in anger and alone, until a group of Asians move in next door.

Now sure, on the surface the movie is as sentimental as this seems, but really Clint has way more things going on here, as Kowalski ends up looking for redemption when the family is caught in some trouble with a local gang of hoods. By looking for redemption, he goes out busting some serious ass and shows us the old Clint when he needs to. There’s a trend in a lot Eastwood’s characters where he stands up for the little man, whether it’s Josey Whales’ wholesale slaughter of the Union Army to protect some would-be settlers or when the gold miners in Pale Rider need the mysterious Preacher to protect them from greedy money men, and here Kowalski stands up for his own again, .45 in hand. Even well into his seventies, eighties – it doesn’t matter. Eastwood is still the man, and not one to be messed with.

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8. Fox, played by Angelina Jolie – Wanted

“Kill one, save a thousand.”

So you’re getting off work, you stop at the grocery to pick up some things, and you turn around to find Angelina Jolie staring at you. She tells you that you’re really supposed to be a millionaire super assassin and that your whole life up to this point has been a lie. Do you go with her? Hell yes you do!

Jolie plays Fox, the member of the assassin cult, The Fraternity, whose task it is to recruit James McAvoy’s Wesley Gibson into fulfilling his destiny, and even in the opening moments of their meeting you see how deadly she is. Shooting around corners, performing acrobatic gun battles on the hood of a car, and insane stunt driving to boot, Fox is the real deal. She also gets the movie’s signature moment, her “Goodbye” bullet showing you how to take out a room of assassins with just one shot.

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7. Indiana Jones, played by Harrison – Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skulls

“What exactly am I being accused of other than surviving a nuclear explosion? ”

So there are a lot of haters when it comes to this movie, but I also think there’s no denying that Harrison Ford was still awesome for every single moment he was on screen. Punching bad guys in their various faces, swinging on whips while causing huge amounts of chaos, and saving the world from evil would be a huge adventure to any one of us. Indiana Jones likes to call a day like that Tuesday. Playing Indy must have been like putting on a really comfortable pair of bad-ass shoes for Harrison Ford, as it seems like he hasn’t lost a step at all, taking down Commies by the hundreds as he searches for ancient artifacts. Say what you want about the scene, if you can survive a nuclear explosion by locking yourself in a refrigerator, you deserve to be on this list.

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6.Tony Stark/Iron Man, played by Robert Downey, Jr. – Iron Man

“Is it better to be feared or respected? I say, is it too much to ask for both?”

Sure, most of us probably thought this movie would be entertaining, but I don’t think any of us were really prepared for just how amazing Iron Man would really be. If it weren’t for The Dark Knight stealing its thunder, and every other movie of last year in the hearts of geeks, Iron Man would probably be even more revered. As it is though, it’s an amazing adventure, and one of the main reasons is Robert Downey Jr.’s Tony Stark. Sure, the final fights at the end of the film weren’t totally satisfying, but think back to the defiance of Stark in the caves at the film’s beginning; instead of caving to save his own life, he constructs his first Iron Man suit out of spare parts from his own company’s tools of destruction. Saving himself by standing up to his captors, he then turns his whole life around to become humanity’s protector, forsaking what would be continuous riches and fame at the cost of lives. That’s bad ass.

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5. Rambo, played by Sylvester Stallone – Rambo

“Any of you boys want to shoot, now’s the time. There isn’t one of us that doesn’t want to be someplace else. But this is what we do, who we are. Live for nothing, or die for something. Your call. ”

Ok, so I make no bones about being a lover of classic ’80s and ’90s Action stars. I grew up on a diet of Schwarzenegger, Stallone, Van-Damne, Seagal, Norris, and Willis, so when one of them returns to the big screen as one of their signature characters, I get pretty hyped up for it full force. With the Terminator, John McClane, and Rocky Balboa already making some pretty high profile returns within the last decade, it’s tough not to get excited about another comeback, even if the results are mixed. You just don’t want to see a half hearted attempt at the glory of yesterday. Well, I tell you, Rambo may have been many things, but “half-hearted” or “watered down” wouldn’t really be the way to describe the movie. This was a full on Rambo movie, and our favorite shell shocked Viet Nam vet was back in a big way.

We’re talking about machete-making, snake-fighting, bomb-blowing, and machine-gun shooting wave of death that descends upon the evil scum of Burma in the form of an American Hero named Rambo, John J. Even a team of mercenary commandos sent in to solve the situation are no match for our hero, a man who seems to have lost a step, only looking more like a giant than the superhuman war machine we first met. Really, this is Rambo’s most serious outing since the first time we met him, and the results are a staggering amount of bloodshed and enemy life that is obliterated. Rambo was one of the ultimate examples of bad ass cinema in 2008, and its hero would be welcome at my local theater anytime.

Only one more part to go. In the mean time, revisit Parts 1 and Parts 2.

Robert Sutton feels the most at home when he's watching some movie scumbag getting blown up, punched in the face, or kung fu'd to death, especially in that order. He's a founding writer for the movies section of Insidepulse.com, featured in his weekly column R0BTRAIN's Badass Cinema as well as a frequent reviewer of DVDs and Blu-rays. Also, he's a proud Sony fanboy, loves everything Star Wars and Superman related and hopes to someday be taken seriously by his friends and family.