Where are all the Tough Guys?

Daniel Murphy | 01 Jun 2010

FOR MEN OF a certain age, the 1987 film Predator was about as much testosterone as one could handle before their teenaged body’s chemical composition reached critical mass and they ripped the arm off their chair and used it to stove a mate’s head in.
Arnold Schwarzenegger was the newly crowned King of the Tough Guys and he was surrounded by a posse of badasses in mortal combat with a primordial alien badass possessing a penchant for human-bone cutlery. Guns, jungles, aliens, dismemberment, muscles: it was like heroin for the lizard brain of the teenage male.
So, two decades later, there is some anticipation regarding the news that the Sin City/Once Upon A Time in Mexico supremo Robert Rodriguez is producing a sequel (ignoring the lamentable ?Predator 2 and Alien Vs Predator). The million dollar question is, who’s gonna step into Arnie’s combat boots? Drum roll please for… Adrien Brody!
Adrien… Brody? A beautiful actor certainly – an Oscar winner for Pete’s sake – but the slender, sensitive, surfboard-fin-nosed star of The Pianist, an action star? He looks like he’d be blown over by a sneeze. Shouldn’t he be playing the nerdy scientist, or the conspiratorial government liaison, or the wise-crackin’ sidekick – all of whom end up getting offed in the third reel?
It makes one wonder: just what makes a tough guy in the 21st century?
As with anything human, it’s a case of art reflecting life (etc, etc). What constitutes “tough” has changed with the times. As economics, circumstances, technologies, medicine and mores have evolved, so have the dimensions of the alpha male. Humphrey Bogart and Arnie bear so little resemblance to one another as to be a different species. Both were men of their time: slender Bogie smoking endlessly, a face like mahogany, drawing a puny .32 calibre whenever baddies went bad; Arnie sporting all the muscles that technology and countless gym hours could muster and toting unfeasibly large weapons, his success measured in mortality statistics and zippy one-liners.
Think of the tough guys through history: Bogie and Jimmy Cagney as zoot-suited gangsters and private dicks in the 30s and 40s gave way to more silent types like Gary Cooper and John Wayne on horseback in the 50s. Sean Connery (and his numerous clones) did the dash ’n’ slash with his tux and martinis for the 60s.
Then another a shift. Bond was the last of the unquestioning, taciturn action men before the arrival of a new breed of tough guys: the sensitive, damaged dudes, their baleful stares offset by their cool ability. Think Steve McQueen, then DeNiro, Stallone and Pacino.
Then there was the great Clint Eastwood: the greatest tough guy in the history of tough guys. The man who has done – and continues to do – it all. In a career that spans more than 50 years, 65 film roles, 33 directed films (with two more to come) and four Oscars, Eastwood managed to be all tough guys rolled into one: cool, solid, damaged, able, conflicted and certain. All in a squint. The moment in Dirty Harry where Harry strolls over to the crim on the sidewalk, amid the chaos and a hydrant geyser, to deliver the “Do you feel lucky punk?” speech is arguably the tough guy oeuvre’s zenith. 
A new coffee-table book by Eastwood’s pal and biographer Richard Schickel, entitled Clint: A Retrospective (Capricorn Link; $49.99) features 275 pages of images of Clint on both sides of the camera, as well as candid shots ranging from the tall, outrageously good-looking youngster who was signed as a Universal player in the 50s to today’s craggy titan of moody cinema.
Through them, vital, submerged characteristics of the on-screen tough guy become apparent in Eastwood’s life. He’s always been underestimated; when it comes to playing smart or dumb he’ll often choose dumb. He is reserved. Wry. Efficient. Capable. Principled. Adored by women. A piano player. Hell, when they make the movie of Clint’s life, who the hell’s gonna play Clint? (My money’s on Josh Hartnett).
But this is a digression from the central issue. Sort of. Clint turned 80 in May, but was still a tough guy as recently as 2008’s Gran Torino. The thing is, he has been a constant through the tides of tough. While Bruce Willis and Arnie were blasting and quipping ze bad guys to death in the 1980s and 90s, Clint was making Heartbreak Ridge and Pale Rider.
As he’s aged, it’s his work as a director that has produced some of the most compelling genre cinema of the last two decades: Unforgiven, Mystic River, Million Dollar Baby, Letters From Iwo Jima and The Changeling. However with Gran Torino probably the last tough guy role Clint will play, the original question still stands: what constitutes tough in 2010?
Russell Crowe’s three big bruiser roles – Romper Stomper, LA Confidential (in which he is astonishing) and Gladiator – would all make him a prime candidate. But he has a tendency now to concentrate on the heroic (Robin Hood) or portly character stuff like Body of Evidence or State of Play.
WA’s own Sam Worthington now seems to be the anointed one. His trilogy of Terminator Salvation, Clash Of The Titans and Avatar show he has the requisite qualities of stillness and explosiveness. Avatar director James Cameron put Wortho on the map because he felt he was archetypal “old-school tough guy”.
Wrestlers like The Rock and John Cena lack gravitas, just like Jean Claude Van Damme, Dolph Lundgren and the fantastically bad Steven Seagal did in the1980s. So no dice there.
But it’s a trick question. Want to know who the toughest “guy” on screen is in 2010? An 11 year-old girl. For sheer potty-mouthed quipping, ass-kicking vigilantism, Hit Girl from the gleefully black comedy Kick-Ass is without doubt the Queen of the Tough Guys.
So maybe Adrian Brody is the right man for the job in Predators. He may appear as terrifying as a packet of Smiths Crisps, but he’s definitely a man of his time.
Unless we can clone Clint. 

Daniel Murphy is the Deputy Editor of FHM. He is about as tough as wet sock in a blender. (Please don’t hit him – especially you, Brody).