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Warrior Casting

I'm taking a poll: which actors (from the 1980's to the present) do you think have been the most convincing in portraying warriors: people who fight and kill other people as a way of life, whether as good guys or bad guys. They look like they have both the physical strength and the mental orientation to engage in deadly force and survive long enough to get good at it. There's usually a ruthless streak in them.

Off the top of my head: Russell Crowe in Gladiator is a standout. I've always found it easy to believe Sean Bean, especially as Sharpe. Chow Yun-Fat has the natural grace and strength, as well as the mental focus. I was willing to believe Uma Thurman in Kill Bill and Michelle Yeoh in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Ken Watanabe in The Last Samurai.

Your thoughts?

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I vote for Tom Hanks in Saving Private Ryan. Ralph Fiennes in Red Dragon was also convincing, but he wasn't exactly a warrior. :P

Chantal

I hate to have to confess this, but I've never seen Private Ryan. I have a hard time imagining Hanks as a warrior. Would you mind elaborating?

*muchly curious*

Daniel Day-Lewis in Last of the Mohicans

Kurt Russell in Soldier

Matt Damon in The Bourne Identity and The Bourne Supremacy

Roy Dupuis as Michael in La Femme Nikita the TV series

Speaking of Sean Bean, I thought he and Pierce Brosnan were both good in Goldeneye as two faces of the same coin. In fact, I thought Pierce Brosnan really fleshed out who I always thought James Bond really was in that movie.

Definitely Daniel Day-Lewis in Mohicans!

I haven't seen the others.

Thanks!

I almost listed Brosnan's Bond as an honorable mention. I find him totally believable as a spy/assassin. He shows a hard/ruthless side that was nowhere to be seen in, say, Remington Steele.

Bean is also excellent as a warrior in Bravo Two-Zero, LOTR, Troy. . . He seems very comfortable handling weapons

Boromir is my favorite character in the movies. I much prefered him to Aragorn. Though, yeah, I loved Aragorn. ;)

I think you would really like the series La Femme Nikita. If you can rent some of them, it would be worth your while.

I'll check it out.
Netflix is a beautiful thing!

Antonio Banderas - 13th Warrior
Forest Whitaker - Ghost Dog
Arnold Schwarzenegger - Conan the Barbarian
Clive Owen - King Arthur
Jean Reno - The Professional

That is just a fast dirty list.

But are real warriors anything like the warriors we see in the movies?

Audie Murphy was a genuine warrior- the most decorated U.S. serviceman of WWII. After the war he got a career in the movies. He was a short, round-faced guy and never really made it beyond the "B" list. Probably his best screen role is as the "coward" in John Huston's Red Badge of Courage.

Jimmy Stewart was a real warrior. He flew bombers. John Wayne, on the other hand, never saw a day's action in his life. But which of the two would you choose to play a warrior? John Wayne every time!

Hanks does a terrific job of portraying a true "citizen soldier." He mananages to get across the notion that, in civilian life, he's just an ordinary, perfectly nice, decent, even gentle man. But he has completely dissociated himself from that person to be the soldier he has to be in the time and place he finds himself.

It's a very interesting take. Definitley have a look.

Definitely Michelle Yeoh. I would also have to vote for Pierce Brosnan as James Bond and the woman who played Eowyn in the LOTR movies.

Willem Dafoe and Tom Berenger in Platoon. Michael Biehn in The Abyss (also not bad in Aliens and Terminator). Tommy Lee Jones and Benicio Del Toro in The Hunted (a bad movie, but with interesting bits -- best training montage ever! -- and lots of pretty footage of Portland).

Let me also second the nominations of Tom Hanks and Jean Reno. (Reno is also good in Ronin.)

I'll also put in a good word for John Amos, who plays Admiral Percy Fitzwallace, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, on television's West Wing. Not exactly the sort of warrior you have in mind, I suppose, but worth thinking about.

I notice that I seem to favor portrayals of more or less contemporary soldiers...nobody on my list carries a sword. Maybe I don't find ancient/fantasy portrayals "convincing"...the temptation to romanticize may just be too strong to allow a really convincing portrayal. Or maybe I just like guns.... No, that's probably not it.

But are real warriors anything like the warriors we see in the movies?

Excellent question. Put another way, is there a difference between a "convincing" portrayal and a "realistic" one? And if so, what does that tell us about our ideas about war and warriors?

One thing I notice about a lot of people's picks (including my own) is that they tend to be older than real soldiers often are. Also, by comparison to the U.S. military, at least, somewhat more likely to be white.

Are you looking for an archetype of "warrior" of the reality of "warrior"?

Archetypal warriors "are the job" - no regrets, no fear, kill and survive.

Real warriors usually don't really want to be there, suffer fear and doubt, sometimes regret what they have to do. Not many characters fit that mold, and not many actors portray that sort of depth.

That said, some people that come across as "warrior" in their roles:

Toshiro Mifune
Zhang Ziyi
Wes Studi
Anne Parillaud

Antonio was someone I almost put on as an honorable mention. He can definitely come across as dangerous, and he can fight. . . but he doesn't say "warrior" to me the same way as the Northmen do in 13th Warrior, especially Vladimir Kulich (Buliwyf).

I need to watch "King Arthur" again. I've only seen it once, and I had mixed feelings about the whole thing. I went back and forth about having Clive Owen on the list.

I also need to see "The Professional."

I've seen Arnold in a bunch of movies, but he's not someone I ever think about. His performances have almost never touched me in a way to make them memorable.

I've always been a bit afraid of watching Ryan. I should probably get over that.

And yes, I recognize the irony of asking questions about movie warriors while admitting to never having seen what is generally acknowledged to be one of the all-time great films about men at war.

I knew I could count on both of you gentlemen,

poliphilo and

athenian_abroad, to bring up this aspect of the discussion.

But are real warriors anything like the warriors we see in the movies?

is there a difference between a "convincing" portrayal and a "realistic" one?

I deliberately did not ask for "realistic" because I don't consider myself to have sufficient expertise for evaluating the answers. I know that some portrayals make me willing to believe that the character has certain qualities I associate with the concept of warrior (listed in the original entry) and some don't.

I would be very interested in the answers of someone who has "been there/done that" experience. Assuming s/he wasn't laughing too hard at my question to actually get an answer out.

poliphilo makes a good point about Jimmy Stewart and John Wayne. However, I notice that both my initial question and list, and the lists I've received in response, focus more on the kind of people we would expect to do well in hand-to-hand/sword-to-sword struggle than what a civilian tends to associate with Air battles.

Good food for thought from both of you -- which, again, is what I always expect. Thanks!

I definitely believe in Brosnan as a spy/assassin, but have a harder time imagining him as the kind of warrior I'm imagining in this discussion.

Miranda Otto is Eowyn, and yes, I would agree. Also Karl Urban as Eomer.

More movies I haven't seen. . .

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