When Action Stars Are the Ones Shouting ‘Action!’

If heroes in action flicks aren’t ridiculously courageous and brutally macho and yet all-around swell enough for your tastes, then check them out when they decide to direct themselves. These Renaissance men who kick butt before and behind the camera are creating a new subgenre: the mayhem-fest with a heart of gold, wherein the heroes may not actually want to inflict bodily harm on their fellow man, but by golly, there are some wrongs to be righted and no one else on this pansy of a planet is willing to get involved.

The latest example is the box-office hit “The Quest” from Jean-Claude Van Damme. Van Damme plays a manly man so rugged he dispatches three tough customers at age 90, and of course also manages to win the most grueling fight in the world. And he doesn’t win just because he has more testosterone than anyone else--that’s apparent--but the movie suggests that it’s because he’s also the most spiritually attuned (another recurring theme in this film series--call it born-again bloodshed).

*

Van Damme manages to conquer all his foes even though just about everyone in the movie picks on him. He’s chased by the mob, exploited by slave traders and kidnapped by a villainous pirate of the high seas played by Roger Moore. (A recent staple of the action-star-directed epic is the appearance of a once-respected British actor munching the scenery as a villain--such as Michael Caine in Steven Seagal’s “On Deadly Ground” and Patrick McGoohan in Mel Gibson’s “Braveheart.”)

Still, Van Damme isn’t one to whine about his own hardships; instead, he reflects selflessly on the Fagin-like relationship he has with a group of young, tousle-haired scamps. Gazing suppliantly upon a religious icon, he pleads, “I need your help--take me home to Billy, the kids.” Who can’t help but like a lug like that?

But Van Damme is only the latest to succumb to his ego and decide he’ll direct a truly special, important action movie. In fact, it’s actually a time-honored tradition. In the films directed by Hollywood’s first action hero, John Wayne, he was a super-patriot, spewing the gospel of God, guns, guts and glory like a rabid street preacher. “The Alamo” is essentially three hours of jabbering about just how great this country is (“Republic,” the Duke drawls as Davy Crockett, just before making the ultimate sacrifice, “I like the sound of the word”), paid off, finally, by a smashing battle sequence (ghost-directed by John Ford); “The Green Berets” was Hollywood’s only major pro-Vietnam movie.

Wayne’s real triumph of ego-stoking was his masterful Oscar campaign in 1960 for “The Alamo,” in which he essentially posited that any academy member who didn’t vote early and often for his stirring leviathan was no doubt an America-hating Commie. The bullying tactic worked: Though response to the movie was tepid at best, it received a best picture nomination and won for best sound.

Of course, the most enduring example of head-smashing auteurism is the Sylvester Stallone oeuvre. Stallone has written and/or directed 15 films--more than, say, Stanley Kubrick; on rare and particularly distressing occasions, he sings.

Stallone’s heroes are cliches on steroids, lovable Italian pugs with their humanity intact but an unerring radar for the most sympathetic gesture imaginable, or bronze-chested superheroes who endure unthinkable pain for the greater good of mankind. Rambo doesn’t just dust up a few backsides, he goes back and single-handedly wins the Vietnam War. And it was never just another fight in Rocky’s universe--every battle pitted gladiators against one another with the very concepts of good and evil hanging in the balance.

For example, Stallone reheated the Cold War in “Rocky IV” by creating a robotic, merciless Soviet boxer who coolly murders Rocky’s African American pal. Therefore, the resulting bout between Rocky and Ivan is about a white man seeking retribution for the black race--and, more to the point, about the United States sticking it to the Reds and teaching them a thing or two about American character and ingenuity.

*

The most respected of the action star-directors, of course, is Mel Gibson, whose epic “Braveheart” carted home the most Oscars in March. But Gibson, too, can’t help but overly mythologize and romanticize his character, William Wallace, who single-handedly leads the Scottish people to rebellion against a tyrannical despot. The film’s advertising hammered on the point that Wallace was easily heads and shoulders above the rest of us: “Every man dies, not every man really lives” (“really living” in this case apparently means seducing your foe’s betrothed and getting disemboweled for your troubles).

But for sheer, delirious lunacy, Seagal’s “On Deadly Ground” is the apotheosis of the ego-actionfest. Playing a Native American with the ecologically correct name of Forrest, Seagal, again virtually single-handedly, rescues the Alaskan wilderness from sure environmental disaster--he actually manages to blow up an entire oil refinery without spilling any fuel!

He’s a cool customer, this Seagal--he lights a cigarette with fire spewing from a refinery inferno and teaches the most evil oil company executives ever to oil-slick a duck’s back the evil of their ways. (Granted, this is by killing them, but they do get the point.) He even delivers a ham-fisted lecture on the environment in the film’s final reel. But the most amazing thing that Seagal manages is mopping up a load of barroom rednecks who pick on a poor, drunken Native American. After busting up more than a dozen guys, he turns to the guy who instigated the fight and, as philosophically as is humanly possible, asks, “What does it take to change the essence of a man?”

Amazingly, the guy, blood spurting from his broken nose, has an answer. “Time,” he says sadly, and Seagal pats the bruiser’s shoulder sympathetically and departs.

That scene is the essence of the action star-directed movie. So, one might reasonably ask, what does it take to change that essence?