Manly movies

It was only about a year ago that Brokeback Mountain was making grown men weep straight ones, too.

It was only about a year ago that Brokeback Mountain was making grown men weep straight ones, too. Eric Bana8217;s hero in Munich was conflicted and tormented about killing Arab terrorists. Johnny Cash battled only his inner demons in Walk the Line. And Good Night, and Good Luck had men grappling with ideas instead of each other.

Oh yes, and Truman Capote was the hero of a movie. Capote made a return last year in Infamous, but more characteristic of the current crop of high-profile cinematic maleness is Children of Men8217;s Clive Owen bashing a pursuer8217;s head in with a car battery.

It8217;s epidemic. In current movies, the male of the species has become increasingly 8230; male. In The Departed, men can8217;t slaughter each other fast enough. Casino Royale renews 0078217;s licence to kill. Forest Whitaker almost makes the bloodthirsty Idi Amin lovable in The Last King of Scotland. And in Blood Diamond, the mercenary Danny Archer, perhaps the first fully adult male of Leonardo DiCaprio8217;s career, is as compromised a character as has ever been called a hero 8211; not counting, of course, Matt Damon8217;s Edward Bell Wilson in The Good Shepherd, the most difficult protagonist to admire since Richard III.

Paul Dergarabedian of the box-office monitor Media by Numbers, LLC speculated that the recent appetite for old-school machismo has 8220;a lot 8230; to do with the way movies present these characters, who have very dubious moral and ethical compasses. A lot of it may have to do with who8217;s playing whom. The hunky Daniel Craig can get away with being a sociopathic Bond. And in a rather perverse twist, Clooney, in The Good German, plays the ostensible good guy, but one who gets routinely beaten up when he tries to assert himself.

8220;What you8217;re seeing now is, in my view part of a general decivilising of the culture,8221; said David Sterritt, emeritus professor of theater and film at Long Island University8217;s C.W. Post campus. 8220;There8217;s also the fact that we are so saturated with media today that to make any kind of impression filmmakers will seize on extreme violence.8221;

8220;I think it may just be serendipitous,8217;8217; said Good Shepherd screenwriter Eric Roth, of the reception given the movie, in which Damon plays a seemingly empty vessel involved in the birth of the CIA. 8220;I think people were a little more willing to accept it because of the current political situation and perhaps the film resonates more now than it would have earlier.8217;8217;

Besides, there8217;s the power of redemption. 8220;You can8217;t have a guy help an old lady across the street,8217;8217; Sterritt said. 8220;You have to have him kill 11 people and then help the old lady across the street.8217;8217;

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In almost all of the recent movies though, regardless of the initial level of cynicism and mayhem, the man ends up traditionally good. This transformation may, in some instances, require his life. But the concept of self-sacrifice as a narrative hook is at least 2,000 years old. Expect to see it again, very soon.

JOHN ANDERSON