Six thrillers with unusually anguished heroes.
This Gun for Hire (1942): Film noir is rife with taciturn badasses, but none are quite as detached as Alan Ladd's hired gun in this Graham Greene adaptation. He borders on robotic, and masking a grim backstory, Ladd's internal turn not only made him a star but was also a major inspiration for the films of French neo-noirist Jean-Pierre Melville, whose Le Samoura� (1967) is essentially an uncredited Hire remake.
The Naked Spur (1953): Think Jimmy Stewart's all roses and sunshine? For five Westerns with director Anthony Mann, the definitive nice guy played an asshole, most memorably in this ensemble thriller as a manic bastard consumed to his very core by greed and insecurity.
Get Carter (1971): Very much the embodiment of the bleak turn cinema took in the 1970s, Mike Hodge's revenge saga sicced a hollowed-out Michael Caine on the mobsters who offed his brother--an endeavor that offers zero fun and zero satisfaction.
First Blood (1982): Sly Stallone may have been in the upper echelon of '80s beefcake action stars, but at least in his first Rambo outing he did it his way--that is, as a self-pitying and anguished Rocky Balboa. How many action classics climax with a fiery soliloquy?
Hulk (2003): The critical tide hasn't quite turned on Ang Lee's "arty" stab at the Green Giant, but given the brooding, stringent turn movies like the last two Bourne films and The Dark Knight have taken, it can't help but look prescient. Perhaps we couldn't handle a blockbuster with a profoundly conflicted hero back in relatively sunny 2003. Not that Ang Lee could either, for the record.
Quantum of Solace (2008): How gloomy is the Bush-era world? Not even James Fucking Bond can have fun anymore. Casino Royale introduced a tougher, more driven 007, but in Solace he's all inner turmoil, all the time--a perfect complement to the Christopher Nolan Batman. Thanks, Al Qaeda.
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