3 Noteworthy Acts of Badassery in Movies with High Artistic Value

I strongly suspect that there are a lot of casual moviegoers (especially males 18-34) out there who would like to be more "cultured" when it comes to movies, but are scared that 'cultured' means watching boring movies.

I'm here to say that it doesn't have to. My goal in the next thousand words or so is to give typical guys an access point to the world of high art cinema. By 'access point,' I mean something that can hold one's interest long enough for one to learn to appreciate the artistic value. And that access point is badassery. By 'badassery,' I mean the practice or state of being a stone cold, bona fide Bad Ass. What follows is a list of my three favorite examples of movies with enough artistic value that you can mention them around academic film snob types and be taken seriously, but that also include at least one moment of epic badassery.

[Note: By directing this post at male demographic, I don't mean to imply that women don't value or can't appreciate badassery. It's just that, if we're dealing in broad generalities, badassery is a particularly good access point for adult men. And I'm sure I'll catch some slack for only listing male characters, but there's a very contentious debate about whether it's even a good thing for female characters in movies to act like male action heros. So I'm sticking to male characters in order to steer clear of this debate. At least for now...] 


3. Don't EVER leave James Dean alone with your girlfriend. Even if you're dead.

 The Movie: Rebel Without A Cause (Nicholas Ray, 1955)

 The Artistic Value: Stewart Stern's screenplay about disaffected youth is a masterpiece, and Ray executes it like a master. The clothes and slang seem old-timey when you watch this movie today, but its dramatic core will keep it relevant for as long as teenagers are pissed at their parents (i.e. forever). And if you're willing to read between the lines a little bit, it touches on some subject matter that mainstream America in the 50's was NOT ready to talk about explicitly (e.g. homosexuality, incest).

The Man: In the 50's, when you thought 'Bad Ass,' two men came to mind: Marlon Brando and James Dean, and each had his own brand of machismo. Brando was the kind of macho that seemed like he came out of the womb throwing punches, whereas Dean was the sensitive guy who had to learn to get tough real quick because everyone always messed with him. If 70's rock analogies help you as much as they help me, James Dean was the Bruce Springsteen to Marlon Brando's The Clash.*

 The Badassery: There's a PSEUDO-SPOILER coming up, but I'll try and do this without giving away too much plot. About halfway through the movie, James Dean's character gets caught up in a dangerous dare with the school alpha male. By a complete accident, the alpha male dies. Within minutes of his death, Jimmy starts macking on the dead guy's girlfriend. Successfully. Take a few minutes to process that.

Kind of like that, except not played for laughs.

 The Caveat: You'll have to put up with the score, which in this day and age sounds a little hokey. But bad-ass never goes out of style.

2. Max von Sydow is the Swedish Chuck Norris.

 The Movie: The Virgin Spring (Ingmar Bergman, 1960)

 The Artistic Value: Ingmar Bergman is probably the greatest and most important director that you've never heard of unless you went to film school. But lots of people whose movies you have seen were really into Bergman. And if your mental image of an arty movie involves people with nihilistic attitudes, photographed in black and white, talking in a foreign language about very serious things, you have Ingmar Bergman to thank. But seriously, the man was a master of his craft who made some of the most gut-wrenching dramas of all time. If you can have an intelligent conversation about one of his movies, any film snob will take you seriously. Also, his 1957 film The Seventh Seal invented the cliche of a man playing chess with death incarnate.

 The Man: Max von Sydow is a Swedish actor who speaks Swedish, Norwegian, English, Italian, German, Danish, French and Spanish. You may recognize him as Father Merrin in The Exorcist, but before that, he made an insane number of movies with Ingmar Bergman. I'd say more about him, but all you really need to know is summed up by his facial hair in The Virgin Spring.

Would you mess with this dude? I didn't think so.

 The Badassery: Again, I'm going to try not to give too much away, but if you've seen The Last House On The Left (Wes Craven, 1972) or its 2009 remake, you already know the plot. Suffice it to say, Max's character realizes he has some murdering to do. But, being a good medieval Christian, he decides his murdering must be accompanied by some preemptive repentance in the form of self-flagellation. And of course the best way for a medieval Swedish farmer to flog himself is with the branches of a birch tree. And what's the best way acquire birch branches? If you answered 'axe,' congratulations. You're a sissy. Max von Sydow walks out into the countryside and removes a full-grown birch tree from the ground with his bare hands. Now, one of the most pervasive theme in Bergman's oeuvre is man's noble struggle against forces outside of his control. And on the one hand, the scene I've just described is a brilliant metaphor for that struggle. On the other hand, it's a dude wrestling with a tree and winning.
 The Caveat: The Virgin Spring has a bad-ass climax, but be prepared for A LOT of talking leading up to it.

1. Clint F***in' Eastwood.

 The Movie(s): Sergio Leone's "Dollars" Trilogy: A Fistful Of Dollars (1964), For a Few Dollars More (1965), and The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly (1966)

 The Artistic Value: Sergio Leone's epic trilogy ushered in a new style of western, usually called "Spaghetti Westerns," because they were shot in Italy with Italian crews. That's because Leone was one of the most innovative visual thinkers of the last 50 years. His style was marked by the juxtaposition of gritty, extreme close-ups of grungy cowboys with gorgeous, idyllic vistas of the American West (or rather, the Italian countryside made to look like the American West).  

 The Man: Before he got noticed by Leone, Clint F***in' Eastwood starred on the TV series Rawhide. After his three films with Leone, he played Harry Callahan in the Dirty Harry series, and then went on to direct several artistic bad-ass films of his own, including Unforgiven (1992) and Gran Torino (2008).

 The Badassery: Of the three films listed, The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly has the most moments of staggering badassery (the badassery is so consistently epic that the American Civil War is a minor subplot), and For a Few Dollars More probably has the greatest average of badassery per minute. But the single most bad-ass moment of the trilogy happens early on in Fistful Of Dollars. For reasons I won't divulge, his character needs to get in good with one particular gang. To do this, he tracks down four of their rivals on the rivals' home turf, and singlehandedly guns them down. His stated reason for the attack: they made fun of his mule when he rode into town.

 The Caveat: Leone's westerns consist of pretty much three things: Breathtaking landscapes, murder, and discussions pertaining thereto. The discussion parts can get a little slow sometimes. But then Clint Eastwood blows up someone's horse by lighting a cannon with his cigar and everything is okay.

Honorable Mention: Akira Kurosawa 

Kurosawa is the father of serious Japanese cinema. Not all of his movies are bad-ass, but he gets an honorable mention because Fistful of Dollars is basically a remake of his samurai classic Yojimbo (1961). Also, the American western epic The Magnificent Seven (John Sturges, 1960) is a remake of Kurosawa's Seven Samurai (1954). Oh, and Star Wars: A New Hope (George Lucas, 1977) borrows heavily from Kurosawa's Hidden Fortress (1958).

Let me wrap up by introducing the first Superlative that I hope will appear regularly on this blog: The Official Tim Campbell Seal of Approval.

The Official Tim Campbell Seal of Approval is named after my friend, Tim Campbell, who only likes movies if he deems them manly enough. Therefore, the Official Tim Campbell Seal of Approval will be bestowed upon films with extraordinary levels of sustained badassery. Leone's "Dollars" Trilogy are the first three films upon which I will bestow this award.

So in closing, the next time someone tells you you should be more cultured when it comes to film, remember the words of Leonidas in 300 with regards to all the soldiers he and his Spartans kill: "We've been sharing our culture with you all morning."

*Before I piss off any Bruce nuts, I'm aware of the quote from "It's Hard To Be A Saint In The City." But he says he walked like Brando, not that he was Brando. Cf. the "learned how to walk like the heroes we thought we had to be" in "Backstreets."