With Bruce Willis aging, Sylvester Stallone, Harrison Ford and Arnold Schwarzenegger getting creakier, Mel Gibson in limbo, Jackie Chan heading back to China for movies and making commercials, Steven Seagal playing lawman on TV and Chuck Norris spending his time cranking out infomercials and trumpeting conservative values, action fans wonder, “Where are the next crop of stars who can kick butt first and ask questions later?”
There are some obvious candidates out there. Jason Statham, for one. The London native—a former Olympic diver—is good for a few action pics a year. Though physically impressive in just about all of them, his prolific work has been inconsistent. For every Crank or The Transporter, there’s a Uwe Boll production like Cellular or 13 or Blitz that goes straight to DVD. Statham has tried to expand his range by starring in the solid heist film The Bank Job, or teaming with other macho heroes in The Expendables movies. He’s got a slate of titles in various stages of production, including the New York-set but Philly-shot Safe, and his name typically draws interest around the world these days.
Thanks to the surprise international hit Taken, Liam Neeson became a bankable action figure in his late fifties. The former amateur boxer from Ireland who played Oskar Schindler, Ethan Frome, Michael Collins and Alfred Kinsey has brought his gravitas to such yarns as Clash of the Titans, Batman Begins, The A-Team, The Next Three Days, Unknown, and The Grey, as well as upcoming efforts like Battleship and sequels to three of the aforementioned projects (Wrath of the Titans, The Dark Knight Rises, a still-unnamed follow-up to Taken). Whether Neeson has lost his serious acting respectability—he was originally going to play Spielberg’s Lincoln, a role Daniel Day-Lewis took on—by trading thespian cred for knockout cred remains to be seen. Let’s not forget that Charles Bronson didn’t make Death Wish until he was 53 years old.
Who is Channing Tatum, really? Is the former exotic dancer who got his break with the Step Up movies a sensitive guy who makes gals swoon in such chick flicks as Dear John and The Vow? Or is he an action-star-in-the-making, showing off his impressive physique and physical prowess as “Duke” in the G.I. Joe films, a tough Roman soldier in The Eagle, a CIA agent nemesis to MMA star Gina Carano in Haywire and a cop going undercover with pal Jonah Hill in 21 Jump Street? Time will tell how Tatum, who has not received much critical love for his acting abilities, goes.
And speaking of Haywire, the aforementioned Gina Carano showed off not only her martial arts expertise but her striking looks and charisma in Steven Soderbergh’s Haywire. Gina—aka “Conviction”—will get another chance to strut her cinematic stuff in the revenge thriller In the Blood, now in production.
Also from the distaff side, Avatar star Zoe Saldana impressed audiences in last year’s Columbiana. With a high energy script co-written by action specialist Luc Besson, the film features the striking Ms. Saldana as an assassin whose parents were killed years ago by drug dealers in Bogota. Now relocated to Chicago, she’s become an expert at killing people, with those guilty of her parents’ demise in her sight. But she doesn’t forget her feminine side, drawing an orchid on her victims’ bodies in lipstick. (You see, her name is Cataleya, the name of an orchid). Besson is an expert with female assassins—he helmed La Femme Nikita and The Professional—and while it’s unlikely we’ll see a follow-up to Columbiana, we’re almost certain to see Zoe kicking ass again down the line soon.
Sam Worthington, Saldana’s co-star in James Cameron’s 3-D spectacular, is on the road to action glory as well. The British-born, Australia-raised performer had a leading role in a Terminator film (Terminator Salvation) prior to Avatar, but is certainly getting his share of work after appearing in the most popular film of all time. He’s been in the two Titans films, the drama Texas Killing Fields and the suspenser Man on the Ledge, and down the road is Drift, a surfers-versus-bikers saga, and two military-themed films with Gerard Butler, Hunter Killer and Thunder Run. Worthington’s rugged good looks and Aussie pedigree suggests a bit of a contemporary Rod Taylor, mate.
Dwayne Johnson, formerly known to wrestling fans as “The Rock,” certainly has carved out a screen career for himself, splitting his time between such macho movies as The Rundown, Walking Tall and Fast Five and family friendly pictures as The Game Plan, Escape to Witch Mountain, Tooth Fairy and Journey 2: The Mysterious Island. But Johnson, who has new Hercules and Fast and the Furious movies on his slate, isn’t the only former wrestler to make it on the screen. WWE star John Cena made some waves as a movie star in 2006’s The Marine, a film that got a quick theatrical release before it drew well on the home market. A standard chase tale in which former Jarhead Cena chases down the crooks that kidnapped his wife, the film worked because of Cena’s stoic but menacing presence. It led to 12 Rounds, a higher budgeted affair helmed by Renny Harlin (The Long Kiss Goodnight). This New Orleans-set policer offered Cena as a Crescent City cop out to avenge his girlfriend’s death. A bigger budget and Cena’s attempt at widening his audience didn’t quite work out for the wrassling star. He did try to broaden his appeal even further, bolstering his presence with name thespians and more drama than action. 2010’s Legendary featured Patricia Clarkson, Danny Glover and Cena in a family drama set against the backdrop of the world of high school wrestling, and 2011’s The Reunion, in which three brothers—disgraced cop Cena, bail bondsman Ethan Embry and crook Boyd Holbrook—decide decide to go into business together, but soon find themselves involved in a kidnapping in Mexico. World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE), which fronted all of Cena’s productions, upped the budgets for the grappler’s last two cinematic excursions, but they failed to click at the box-office. The rap-happy wrestler is now back in the ring with no films in development, although it’s unlikely we can count him out of movies for good.
Who do you think has a chance to become the next big action star? Let us know.