1. The Expendables: Are you old enough to remember World War II? John Wayne starred as a Navy PT boat hero in “They Were Expendable. This 2010 action thriller with a similar name has just about every current and has-been macho Hollywood action hero in it except Wayne.
Sylvester Stallone is the star and director, so every inevitable explosion and bad-guy offing was shot with gory detail. Not that the plot matters very much, but Stallone and his team were sent to wipe out a South American dictator (a Hugo Chavez-ish guy), and just seeing those musclebound guys would cause any dictator to have a fatal heart attack.
Included on the team were Mickey Rourke, Dolph Lundgren, Bruce Willis, Eric Roberts and a guy who just retired as governor of Cal-ee-fornia, Arnold Schwarzenegger. If you like special effects violence and sweaty faced heroes, you’ll enjoy this film.
2. Robin Hood: Of course, this tale has been told repeatedly since the silent film days of Douglas Fairbanks. Errol Flynn did it with a swashbuckler smirk, and Disney portrayed all of the characters as animals, with Robin as a fox.
Russell Crowe, who was great in “Gladiator”, the film about Ancient Roman days, seemed perfectly natural as the legendary 13th Century English folk hero. In this sort-of the returning GI story, Robin came home from fighting in France with King Richard the Lionhearted. He found corruption and tyranny as only King John and the Sheriff of Nottingham can dish it out.
It evolved into the legendary robbing from the rich to give to the poor, just the opposite of what today’s U.S. Congress is doing. One twist on the story is that Cate Blanchett was not the traditional and virginal Maid Marion, but the Lady Marion, widow of a fallen knight. The Robin-Marion love affair was somewhat more mature than it was depicted in previous Robin Hood movies, but so is Hollywood these days.
3. True Grit: The Coen brothers managed to give this film Oscar competition by opening it in theaters on Christmas Day 2010. The Hollywood buzz is already out that stars Jeff Bridges and Hailee Steinfeld will almost certainly be nominated, and both could win.
For Bridges, who played drunken, one-eyed Marshal Rooster Cogburn, it would be two Oscars in two years. Teenager Steinfeld was Mattie Ross, a non-nonsense girl who paid the reluctant marshal to help her track down her dad’s killer. Matt Damon rode along on the quest as a young Texas Ranger with an ever-changing love-hate relationship for the old lawman.
Until the last 15 minutes, the film was deliberate and scenic as the trio rode through the rugged 19th Century western landscape. Then suddenly, there were great action sequences as the alcoholic marshal and Texas Ranger killed a whole gang of bad guys.
There were many great action movies that debuted 2010, and one’s favorites depend on two questions of individual taste. Do you define action as reality happening in real time to real people? Rather, do you want your action movies to be a mess of digital tricks, jerky camera movements, robots, other-world creatures and lots of sound-track noise?
