By Brandon Nolta

So, like many of you out there in Electric Readerland, I got plenty of things for Christmas, including a gift card to the local entertainment store. (Personally, I love gift cards, so if you ever feel the need to bribe me for any reason at all, that’s the way to go.) Anyway, off I went to cash in, and as I came home with my purchases, a surprising fact struck me: Of the five movies I’d picked up, three of them starred that unsung professional of the silver screen, Kurt Russell.

As a longtime movie buff, I’m of the opinion that Russell is greatly underappreciated by the Hollywood mainstream and the moviegoing public. Yes, he earns a good salary, and he doesn’t lack for work, but he doesn’t seem to enjoy the critical regard that someone of his ability and experience should. Part of this is probably due to Russell’s aura of confident masculinity; he always comes across as a strong, easygoing fellow, and that probably fools some people into thinking he’s not really acting (many people thought the same of Robert Mitchum during his career). It might also be the fact that Russell has never shied away from genre work, which gets the red-headed stepchild treatment from many mainstream critical outlets, and thus gets smeared by association. If IMdB is to be believed, his award nominations are few and far between, and he has yet to win any of them. What a crock.

Overall, though, I think it’s mostly due to the fact that Russell simply goes to work, does his job, and never makes a fuss about it. He doesn’t call attention to Kurt Russell the actor, he just does his work. It’s a blue-collar work ethic, and while it doesn’t grab the headlines, it makes his roles succeed. If you look at the roles he’s done since the beginning of his mature career—defined for this article as his portrayal of Elvis in the 1979 telefilm ELVIS—there’s a richness of character and depth most actors would kill to have on their resumes.

In keeping with the list-centric nature of Internet postings, here’s a short list of my favorite Kurt Russell performances, arranged in the order I thought of them in. I won’t make the claim that these are his best performances, because I haven’t seen all the films he’s been in, but these are the ones I’ve enjoyed the most. These performances, to me, show why Kurt Russell ought to be held in higher esteem by critics and those award types:

1. SOLDIER (1998): Raised by a futuristic military to fight and die, his notions of family and loyalty inextricably bound to the service, Sgt. Todd (Russell) and his squad mates are abandoned in favor of genetically engineered super-soldiers. After getting a severe beating by Caine 607, the leader of the new group played by Jason Scott Lee, Todd is dumped unceremoniously on a garbage planet, where he hooks up with a society of refugees and outcasts making a living among the detritus of worlds. He has a tough time fitting in, but he starts to figure it out … just in time for the new breed to show up to use Todd’s new friends as target practice. Todd may not be as physically optimized as Caine—though it’s tough to tell—but he’s smarter and way more experienced in the art of war. Let the violence begin.

Much was made of the fact at the time that Russell was paid a high salary to play a guy with little dialogue (Todd speaks barely more than a hundred words in the entire film), but acting is more than just the words coming out of one’s mouth. Robbed of verbiage and most human facial expressions, Russell nonetheless makes Todd’s journey from Terminator to father figure realistic without being forced or false. When he picks up a fatherless boy and points toward the stars in the last scene, Todd simultaneously shows awkwardness, concern and hope with the set of his jaw and the look in his eyes. Now that’s acting.

2.  THE THING (1982): Sure, life can be dull at a U.S. research outpost in Antarctica, but boredom takes a powder when a sled dog bounds into camp, quickly followed by Norwegians taking shots at said dog. After the Norwegians crash and die, a team from the outpost heads over to their outpost to investigate their behavior and learns that Norway’s sons found a flying saucer buried in the ice (fortunately, the Norwegians videotaped all this). They dug it up, and found that the inhabitant—a shape-changing extraterrestrial with a foul temperament—was alive and irritated. Although nobody from the U.S. outpost speaks Norwegian, the tape and evidence found in camp makes it clear that something tore through the camp in record time … and is now at their place, masquerading as the dog. Upon their return, the movie switches gears and becomes an exercise in gore and paranoia, as the men start to suspect each other of being the shape-shifter and the body count spirals ever-upward in a gruesome fashion.  

The third of five collaborations between Russell and director John Carpenter, THE THING is notable for many reasons, particularly in its extreme (for the time) gore, courtesy of Rob Bottin. This is probably one reason why it bombed in first run … the other being that it was released just two weeks after E.T. Anyway, the movie boasts a stellar ensemble cast, but Russell, as helicopter pilot and reluctant leader Mac, stands out as a man who went to the ends of the earth to get away from humanity and winds up sacrificing himself to save it. Mac is often scared and rarely sure, but he’s smart and decisive, and Russell gives him the steel needed to survive and battle the alien to the cold and bitter end.

3. DARK BLUE (2002): It’s the early 1990s in Los Angeles, and the fire is on its way. The Rodney King trial is underway, and the city appears to be on hold waiting for the verdict against the LAPD officers on trial. In a rare turn for Russell, he takes on a more villainous role as Sgt. Eldon Perry, a longtime LAPD veteran whose approach to the law is quite different than most cops. There isn’t much Perry won’t do or concoct on orders from on high, and his personal foibles—ranging from racism to being a raging drunk—don’t help much. But, as the city convulses in the wake of the King verdict, Perry finds that even he has a bottom line, and as hard as it is to find, the good cop he once was is still in there somewhere.

Russell manages a tough trick here by taking a thoroughly unlikable character, making no excuses for him and still managing to make him sympathetic. If Perry has any redeeming characteristics, Russell hides them for most of the film … and yet, when he comes around near the end, it’s reluctant and remorseful and completely believable within the context of the film. Russell, whose bonhomie and personal charm are always on hand, makes these qualities feel rancid when Perry puts them to use. It’s one of the strongest performances in his career to date.

4. BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA (1986): How much more cult classic can you get? Supposedly created as an intended sequel to BUCKAROO BANZAI, the script and the resultant film quickly mutated into something very unusual for Hollywood at the time, though it was old hat in Hong Kong. A wry and clueless trucker named Jack Burton, one of Kurt’s most famous characters, gets involved in a centuries-old war between good and evil when he tries to collect on some money owed him by his friend Wang from Chinatown. Wang needs the money for his upcoming marriage, but his fiancée gets kidnapped before even leaving the airport by a gang, working for an ancient sorcerer who needs a woman with green eyes to appease the gods and become mortal again. Before you can say wire fu, Jack, Wang and a cast of weirdos have descended to the sorcerer’s underground lair to rescue some damsels, battle some extra dimensional bad guys and indulge in a little kung fu fighting.

Nobody in America quite knew what to make of it when it came out, but this loving pastiche of slapstick satire and kung fu has become a cult classic, and Russell is obviously in on the joke from scene one. Jack Burton is a cowboy in true John Wayne style (he even talks like the Duke), but without the fighting skill or the good sense to back it up. Still, Jack is cheerfully protected by cluelessness which reaches force field levels and it’s undeniably true that he has excellent reflexes. Plus, his heart’s in the right place. More than any other performance save perhaps SKY HIGH, Russell seems to be having a very good time; it’s a wonder that he doesn’t break into laughter every other scene. Burton is the best and worst of cowboy clichés rolled together, and Russell has a ball bringing this trucker to life.

5. TANGO AND CASH (1989): I’m not sure who thought of putting Sylvester Stallone and Kurt Russell in the same film, but after the initial shock wears off, it makes a strange kind of sense. They’re both very physical actors, they have a penchant for trying things that goes outside their so-called “image,” and they’re both funny, although neither gets much of a chance to show that off. With TANGO AND CASH, they got their chance. The movie itself is a string of clichés from beginning to end: two competing maverick LAPD cops at the top of their game, sinister bad guys, one cop falls for the cherished female relation of the other, lots of gay jokes in a prison, etc. In fact, once I tell you Jack Palance plays the villain, you could probably reconstruct most of the movie from what little info I’ve given.

What doesn’t come across is how monumentally silly this film is, and since Stallone and Russell both know it, they go along for the ride. Stallone brings dry wit to his characterization, leaving the broader comedy and one-liners to Russell, and he goes for broke. It’s like Michael Bay decided to start telling jokes, but somehow it works. Nobody will mistake this film for Shakespeare, but if you want to see Kurt Russell take on action comedy and come out on top, TANGO AND CASH is a good way to go.

6. SKY HIGH (2005): Like Pixar’s wonderful THE INCREDIBLES, SKY HIGH postulates a world where superheroes are real and quite common. Unlike that Brad Bird masterpiece, however, superheroes enjoy much acclaim and adulation in this universe, none more so than the Strongholds, Jetstream (Kelly Preston) and the Commander (Russell). While they keep the world safe—and sell real estate in their normal identities—their only son Will (Michael Angarano) is about to start high school at Sky High, the high school for metahuman teens and/or the offspring of superheroes. Will has a problem, though: his powers haven’t manifested yet. Does this mean Will has a future as (gasp) a sidekick?

Russell’s role as Will’s father is actually a supporting role, as the focus is entirely on the tween and teen set. Still, he steps up like the pro he is, and makes the Commander (whose power is super-strength) an endearing, not too bright, somewhat clumsy but loving father, who veers between being too much like a kid himself and being the authority figure for the family. In other words, he’s the stereotypical American dad … who can toss small cars into orbit. The Commander is another role where Russell was obviously having fun, undoubtedly drawing from his own parenting experience to make his character true to life, at least as much as a guy with super-strength can be. Loads of fun, and far less sappy that you’d expect from the Magic Kingdom. 

7. ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK (1981): In his mature career, Russell has only played one character more than once (unless you count the voiceover he did as Elvis for FORREST GUMP, and I don’t), and no look at his work would be complete without visiting Snake Plissken, anti-hero and lead of John Carpenter’s grim 1981 dystopic classic. It was this role that marked a sea change careerwise for Russell, who still had the weight of his child star years with Disney hanging over him, and it was the gruff Plissken, with his Eastwood-like growl and willingness to tear down anything in his way, that convinced audiences and Hollywood that Russell had more to offer.

The year is 1997, and America’s gone to hell. An ever more authoritarian government has turned New York into a penal colony, and once there, you ain’t getting out. Until the President (a creepy Donald Pleasance) is forced to bail out of Air Force One and lands in New York, that is. Now, the government needs someone to go get him, and since Plissken’s rotting in the federal pen for bank robbery, he’s available. Given a time limit thanks to a nasty surprise injected into his bloodstream, Snake gets to glide in, find the President, and get the hell out before a conference vital for national security. However, he’s got a serious charm deficiency as well as issues with authority, so things don’t exactly go as planned.
Certain actors become so entwined with their characters that it becomes nearly sacrilege to imagine anyone else playing them, and Snake Plissken is a prime example of that. Yes, Hollywood has a remake of ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK in the works, but it will probably be at best a pale imitation. Russell inhabits Plissken from his first appearance in the film, taking liberally from action stars of the past (most noticeably, the Duke and Clint Eastwood) and making a new template for action protagonists: silent, capable, and willing to crash the system just to make a point. Nobody else could, or should even try, embody Snake Plissken to the iconic degree Russell did.

8. BREAKDOWN (1997): Jeff Taylor (Russell) and his wife are on a long drive through the desert for vacation. An encounter with a loudmouth redneck at a gas station leaves Jeff a little shaken, and sets a pall over the drive, one that deepens when his vehicle breaks down. Flagging down a passing trucker (J.T. Walsh), Jeff catches a ride into town to get help, leaving his wife with the car. When he gets back to the car, she’s disappeared, and nobody remembers seeing her with him.

Anybody who remembers the name of the late great character actor J.T. Walsh probably knows where this is going, and so it does. But for the first half-hour or so of the movie, BREAKDOWN aims to disturb the audience, and it succeeds largely through Russell’s balanced performance of a modern fellow, not aggressive in the least but no coward, who finds himself in a situation that resists all reason and logic as he understands it. Taylor is unlike most other Russell characters in that he’s not innately confident or physical; he’s a white-collar professional whose world does not encompass some of the nutjobs he finds himself going against in the climax of the film. When he finds the steel within to rescue his wife and mete out a little justice, there are hints that Taylor’s not entirely comfortable with the revelation, another layer that Russell adds. It’s a different shading for Russell, and one that he handles capably.

I could go on in this vein for quite a while longer—I haven’t even touched on STARGATE, EXECUTIVE DECISION, BACKDRAFT, MIRACLE, TOMBSTONE or DEATH PROOF yet—but it’s safe to say that Kurt Russell has given moviegoers a wide body of work to peruse. The performances I’ve listed span the last 29 years or so; here’s hoping that Mr. Russell has at least another 29 years in his career, and that he finally attains the critical respect (and awards) that seem to have eluded him so far.