Hard to make a solid argument against The Duke, but I offer Robert Mitchum and Burt Lancaster as possibilities. And then there’s Steve McQueen in the next generation.
Macho in as much as a guy who can answer the question “is someone with 18 strength and 1d10 hit points per level a macho or a weak person?” truthfully and without hesitating. But that’s cooler now than it was 20 years ago.
The factual answer to #4 is the Expendables series. I mean that’s kind of the point of it!
Mark Wahlberg, who has so much swagger he played a guy named “Swagger,” recently took a break from playing soldiers and cops to shirtlessly uppercut folks as The Fighter, after which he took roles from ‘Navy SEAL’ to ‘private eye of the fistfight-and-car-chase type’ to ‘steroid-fueled bodybuilder who turns to a life of crime’.
Oh, and he’s apparently the go-to guy for a Six Million Dollar Man movie.
They both are, and they’re both good examples of the evolution of the movie “tough guy.” Both tend to come across, both on and to a lesser extent off screen, as smarter and more nuanced than 80s-style action heroes. Arnold and Sly are both demonstrably smart dudes in real life, but their film roles tended to be pretty consistently meathead. And guys like Van Damme and Seagal seem positively cartoonish in hindsight.