What is the best macho movie ever made? To be considered a “macho movie”, it must contain most of these charactersitics:
“Thelma and Louise”.
Although I disagree, my brother receantly proclaimed Reign of Fire as the ultimate alpha-male movie.
“Phallus in Wonderland” by GWAR, has every single quality you describe. They have quite a few “movies,” But this one is actually pretty good if you ask me. Although the kidnapping in question is not a woman or child, it is pretty twisted. I am laughing just thinking about it. (The kidnapping is much more “personal” in nature.)
Versus by Ryuhei Kitamura gets a vote from me. Don’t understand Japanese? Doesn’t matter with this movie. It’s got:
This movie is insanely violent, but so ridiculously over-the-top that even my blood-shy wife was laughing herself silly by the end of it.
Plus, it’s got a great take on the over-used Matrix-style bullet dodging (Hint: it don’t do jack against an RPG)
Oh, come on. It’s Die Hard, of course.
Naw. I spent the movie rooting for Alan Rickman.
The Lone Wolf And Cub series from Japan.
The head of the Yagyu clan is as nasty and underhanded as can be. But most of the films have other lesser villains who are fairly nasty. Including a Buddhist monk who is considered a living Buddha since he has attained enlightenment, but he’s also a crime lord. A team of assassins who tunnel underground to get to their targets and kill anyone Ogami Itto and son (the main characters) come in contact to isolate them since they are so hard to kill.
Things, hell, these flicks blow up people.
Gotcha guns, a whole babycart full of them. As for meaningless deaths, the body count in these films must average out to over 100 in each of the six films.
Ogami Itto says very little but constantly refers to his son and himself as demons standing at the crossroads of Hell.
The son gets kidnapped a few times.
They are samurai flims, so lots of brutal swordfights and hand to hand action, remember the body count.
Cool vehicle: A babycart packed with spring loaded blades, knives and spears hidden in the handles and frame, an array of muskets mounted in the front behind a drop away panel, a musket ball proof iron plate mounted in the bottom (tip the cart up to use), and yet the damn thing floats!
ALL YOUR LESBIANS ARE BELONG TO US
That would be Commando.
“I eat Green Berets for breakfast!”
“Remember, Sully, when I promised to kill you last?”
“That’s right, Matrix. You did!”
“I lied.”
Come on, who couldn’t love a movie like Commando? It even comes complete with a kidnapped Alyssa Milano!
The Road Warrior. It may be missing one or two elements, but it makes up for them in the other categories.
What about Predator?
Although I always thought that Dirty Dozen was the ultimate macho movie.
FEH!!! Army of Darkness.
Though I admit to never having seen Versus wich I will try to soon.
How about Hard-Boiled?
Hard Boiled is definitely in my top five choices. The best point to prove the villain’s lack of redeeming qualities: [spoiler]
One of the good guys and an honorable bad guy are fighting in the hospital. In the midst of it, they come across a group of nurses and patients, and decide to let them go before picking up the fight. The main villain comes in, looks at them, says “What’s all this?”, grabs a machine gun, and mows them all down. Wonderful
Also, John Woo’s The Killer is a VERY macho movie. If you thought the body count in Hard Boiled was big (which it was), the chapel scene in this movie is GARGANTUAN!
Yojimbo is another really good samurai type film. No guns, but hell, what are guns compared to people street fighting and cuting one another down with swords. The “hero” of the film is a samurai for hire who plays two rival gangs against one another and eventually slaughteres EVERYONE IN THE VILLAGE minus two people who helped him out (or was it one? I can’t remember)
For more updated and American movies, you gotta admit, Rambo is high on the list. Exploding arrow to the gut of the main baddy…gotta love it.
For even more updated, you have to admit, Fight Club is probably the best. The whole movie’s about what it is to be a man, and the number of scenes of people just beating the crap out of each other with their bare hands…brutal. There’s kidnapping, there’s explosions, there’s not much gun fire, but a guy shoots himself in the face, blows out his jawbone, and continues to just stand around and talk to people! That’s fucking macho! I ask you, how much more macho could this movie be?
I’ll get flamed for this but…
Starship Troopers
d&r
THANK you! The debate is over. Except for the hero saying something catchy (he pretty much says nothing at all) The Road Warrior hits every one of the criteria. How can you top a movie where women wear football shoulder pads as clothing?
I have to second the vote for Army of Darkness, using a important pop-culture indicator: the number of lines stolen from it for the first-person shooter video game Duke Nukem 3D.
Duke Nukem is, of course, the testosterone-drenched oiled-up gun-totin’ muscleman mowing down aliens and ogling naked chicks as he runs through a series of infested buildings and spacecraft. Not a lot of heavy-duty social commentary is allowed to intrude.
I’d also vote for They Live, which is macho in an embittered working-class blue-collar kinda way. The undercover alien villians are Reaganite yuppies running the economy into the ground (including throwing people like hero Roddy Piper out of work) just to make themselves rich. Piper and David Keith get into a huge 5.5-minute (!) fistfight, and this ain’t one of your sissified kung-fu dustups, either. It a solid and extended bout of head-buttin’, fist-smashin’ and multiple-knees-indanutz. One of Piper’s lines: “I have come to kick ass and chew bubblegum. And I’m all outta gum!” is delivered just before he starts shotgunning bank customers. This sparkling witticism also found its way into Duke Nukem.
Ah, that felt good. Now, excuse me, I’ve gotta go rip off an alien’s head and shit down his neck.
Yes, I cried at the end of Babe, the part where he says "That’ll …
Wait. Oh crap.
First Blood. “What you call hell, he calls home.”