Where Have All the Bad Guys Gone?

Newer actors don't have an easy time of it trying to nail sufficiently scary villains. Their predecessors have raised the bar too high. Think of Joe Pesci as the churlish psychopath in GoodFellas. Think of Joe Pesci as the churlish psychopath in Casino. Think of Wes Studi as the Stone Age butcher in The Last of the Mohicans. Think of Tim Roth as the prissy rapist in Rob Roy. Think of Michael Madsen as the pyromaniacal ear surgeon in Reservoir Dogs. Think of Anthony Hopkins as a flesh-eating doctor in The Silence of the Lambs and Hannibal. Think of Robert Patrick as the homicidal droid in Terminator 2: Judgment Day. Think of Gary Oldman as the stylishly retro pimp in True Romance. Think of John Travolta and Nicolas Cage as interchangeable sociopaths in Face/Off. Think of J.T. Walsh as the demented truck driver in Breakdown, Samuel L. Jackson in Pulp Fiction, Kevin Spacey in Se7en. Most particularly, think of Dennis Hopper in Blue Velvet and Speed, John Malkovich in Con Air and In the Line of Fire, and Christopher Walken in just about anything.

How has the motion-picture industry reached this dire impasse? A number of factors are at work. For one, the Hoppers, Malkoviches and Walkens may now be growing tired of playing mass murderers, hired killers and sex maniacs. The sheer volume of movies released each year makes it impossible for this tiny cadre of hideous ogres to fulfill all the demands placed upon it. But another more compelling reason for the conspicuous absence of malice on the screen these days is that producers appear to be attempting to cut costs. After shelling out so much money for the Tom Cruises and Bruce Willises, they don't have anything left to pay for a credible bad guy. So they try to do things on the cheap, either by hiring a complete nobody or paying a star less for the chance to play against type.

Ultimately, this strategy will blow up in their faces. Here's why: A true villain is not only the rodent he portrays in one movie, but the sum total of every other species of vermin he has ever played throughout his career. Thus, when you hire Al Pacino to play Satan in The Devil's Advocate, you are also getting Michael Corleone, Lefty Ruggiero and that vicious blind man from Scent of a Woman as part of the bargain. When you cast Walken as the murderous Hessian in Sleepy Hollow, you are also getting the sadistic mobster from True Romance, the sadistic mobster from Things to Do in Denver When You're Dead and the sadistic mobster from innumerable other films. By contrast, when you cast Christopher Eccleston as the bad guy in Gone in Sixty Seconds, all you get is a chump who can't even spook my daughter. When you cast Keanu Reeves as a serial killer in The Watcher, all you're getting is Bill. Or Ted. I can never remember which.

Tragically, some of the finest onscreen villainy in recent years has gone completely unwatched. Tim Robbins was exquisitely unpleasant in the underrated Arlington Road, but few moviegoers saw the film. Jeff Bridges showed promise as a diffident serial killer in The Vanishing. The intense Delroy Lindo has been a standout in films as varied as Malcolm X, Clockers and Feeling Minnesota. Yet in each case, these portrayals of subhuman sleazoids have gone unnoticed due to the failure of these releases to click at the box office. In Shaft, which did OK at the box office, Jeffrey Wright brought a refreshing homicidal energy to his role as a status-conscious drug dealer, but his performance was blunted by Christian Bale's diversionary tactics as a sort of Assistant Villain who kept slowing down the story.

What can be done to correct this problem? For starters, Hollywood should stop overlooking some of its most precious natural resources. The last time I looked, Mickey Rourke was still breathing, and based on his cameo as a demented bookie in Buffalo 66, I'd say he is more than ready to do some of the heavy lifting in films like M:I-2. Kiefer Sutherland has always had an aura of menace about him, and now that he has gotten a bit of age on him, the time might be right to forsake all hopes of ever being a leading man and settle for. playing the heavy. He could learn at the feet of the master, Jon Voight. Anyone who saw Voight's work in Mission: Impossible, Anaconda or Varsity Blues recognizes that switching from the ail-American boy to the Prince of Darkness is merely a question of a few cold stares, one or two raised eyebrows, the occasional well-placed snarl. This isn't brain surgery.

Let me conclude this essay by discussing two recent films that have resorted to highly innovative techniques to compensate for the villain shortfall. In Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, the hero's dreaded nemesis was played by a chubby old woman. Because Ang Lee's movie is basically an all-girl martial arts film, this quirky casting decision had a certain thematic consistency, and in the end things worked out quite well. Since imitation is the highest form of flattery, and since imitation is the engine fluid of the motion-picture industry, a spate of films starring aging, pudgy female villains is hardly out of the question. Valerie Perrine could use the work. And while it may now be too much to hope for, I certainly wouldn't mind seeing Barbra Streisand cast as the apotheosis of pure evil. To my way of thinking, it's the role she was born to play.

The other motion picture worthy of our attention is The Blair Witch Project. What made this ultra-low-budget affair so effective was the refusal of the filmmakers to actually show the witch on-screen. By refusing to identify who was responsible for the murders taking place in the wilds of rural Maryland, the filmmakers forced the audience to confront their own personal demons and construct highly personal images of the murderer. Some people I spoke to felt that the Blair Witch was a hideous old woman armed with insuperable necromantic powers. Others said she was probably a pedophile masquerading as a sorceress. Still others conjured up the image of a large, heavyset All-Pro linebacker for the Baltimore Ravens football team.

Speaking for myself, I immediately visualized the Blair Witch as a 150-year-old leprosy-ravaged succubus with the body of Oprah Winfrey and the personality of Courtney Love. And I haven't slept well for the 18 months since I saw the film.

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Joe Queenan wrote about cinema beheadings for the December/January issue of Movieline.

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