Blown Saves: The 25 Most Miscast Action Heroes In Movies

Would you follow Channing Tatum into battle? That’s the question indirectly presented in this weekend’s biggest new release The Eagle, the latest work to come from Hollywood’s neverending assembly line of Roman warrior fictionalizations. Having seen the movie, our answer is a resounding “Nah, son.” The Eagle isn’t a total loss, though; Scottish director Kevin MacDonald (State of Play) achieves an engaging and breathless pace, and co-star Jamie Bell once again shows his 25-and-under peers how quality acting is done. But the movie is predominantly a Tatum showcase, and, sadly, the former model is no Andy Whitfield (the perfectly cast lead on the first season of the Starz hit Spartacus: Blood And Sand). In The Eagle, Tatum, whose career skyrocketed after starring in 2006’s Step Up (or, as we like to call it, White Men Can Dance), mindlessly alternates between a half-assed 2nd Century Roman accent and his real-life speech, which wouldn’t ruin things if he could deliver a forceful monologue with even a shred of shot-calling command. It’s not ludicrous to think that MacDonald chose Tatum as his star simply to attract a younger female audience; if so, The Eagle was screwed before the first day of shooting. Action pics are often botched through poor casting, so we’ve relived past frustrations to compile this list of the 25 most miscast action heroes in movies.

RELATED: The 50 Greatest Action Movies of All Time

Who doesn’t love those Back To The Future movies? The first two specifically were formative for us as youngsters, catapulting shrimpy Michael J. Fox to the pop-culture-icon stratosphere. In between Back To The Future and Back To The Future 2, though, he took a shot at dramatic credibility in Brian De Palma’s dark Vietnam film Casualties Of War. Pitted against the ferocious Sean Penn, Fox, not for lack of effort, looked like a boy playing with items in his father’s gun collection.

If Beavis and Butthead were casting agents, this is a move that they’d make, chuckling the entire time Halle Berry first tried on her S&M-knockoff Catwoman suit. Not that we’re complaining on that front; the costume’s generosity was the only good thing about this infamously rotten calamity. Unable to efficiently capitalize on her 2001 Academy Award win for Monster’s Ball, Berry foolishly signed on to this mess, though she should’ve never gotten the call in the first place. Her performance is overly campy, the work of an actress who realizes she’s making dreck and tries to overcompensate. Still, if a gal is going to fail wretchedly, she might as well do it in a ripped-up leather outfit.

We can’t blame reclusive graphic novelist Alan Moore for condemning Hollywood’s comic-to-film adaptations. All he needs to do is revisit the ’03 movie version of his celebrated series The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen to remind himself of the inadequacies. Stephen Norrington’s flick was an end-to-end disaster, but worst of all was the casting of vapid Shane West in the pivotal role of Tom Sawyer. Next to Sean Connery (who played head honcho Allen Quartermain), West couldn’t so much as elevate a scene, let alone steal one.

El Mariachi playing a sword-wielder from Baghdad? No, sir—we couldn’t buy it then, and nothing has changed 12 years later. Not to pigeonhole the man (Pause?), but Banderas makes such a cool Mexican badass in Robert Rodriguez’s free-wheeling Desperado films that it’s impossible to buy him in this haughty, and ultimately shitty, Viking picture. The 13th Warrior rests uncomfortably in the annals of lowest-common-denominator historical epics, the same area in which Channing Tatum’s The Eagle has already secured residential placement.

Leonardo Dicaprio is one this generation’s finest actors, no doubt; in 2002, though, the jury was still out. The world had yet to see his rugged turns in films like The Departed and Shutter Island and was used to him being the pretty-boy type with more chops than his Tiger Beat-frequenting peers. So Martin Scorsese’s choice to shape Leo into a hardened, mid-19th-century NYC pugilist was risky, and, unfortunately for us, detrimental to the flick’s complete toughness. On the flipside, Gangs Of New York led to three much better Scorsese/DiCaprio tag-teams, so for that we’re grateful.

It’s not that Jim Belushi isn’t believable as a police officer; we’ve seen plenty of coppers inside the local Dunkin’ Donuts that look just as disheveled and also tell unfunny jokes. The dog in the 1989 action-comedy K-9? Now there’s a fitting crime-fighting partner for the slovenly funnyman. Unlike Arnold Schwarzenegger, Belushi’s stunt-loving colleague in Red Heat, K-9’s German Shepherd doesn’t make your boy Jim look like he stumbled onto the wrong film set. Schwarzenegger has worked with plenty of unworthy on-screen sidekicks, but Belushi remains the most ill-minded. And the former Governator once co-starred with Sinbad, for crying out loud!

Adam Sandler is good at two things: playing lovable goofballs and choosing his leading ladies. And you know what neither one of those abilities involves? Handling firearms. He’s always been the type of actor that frat-boys want to be like and women like despite their best efforts to hate, so having him play a gun-packing crook, like he does in the dismissible Bulletproof (co-starring Damon Wayans), goes against all that’s satisfactory in Lunchlady Land.

In this case, we’re calling out the wrongful casting simply because we like John Cusack so much. Since his iconic coming-of-age ’80s movies, the eclectic actor has bettered damn near every project he’s taken on, including the ridiculous 2009 CGI-orgy 2012. Back in 1997, Cusack was respected but not quite a mega-star, so perhaps he joined director Simon West’s moronic yet shamefully enjoyable Con Air in hopes of gaining a whole new popcorn-flick-loving audience. Unfortunately, seeing Cusack actually trying to act out an idiotic script and distract viewers from Nicolas Cage’s long hair and bad Southern accent turned out to be a painful experience.

While others saluted Adrien Brody’s against-type performance in last year’s Predators, we couldn’t hop on the bandwagon. In our eyes, an action hero shouldn’t resemble a taller, skinnier, and much more suave Pee-Wee Herman. The same qualm existed for us six years ago, when Peter Jackson turned the wiry Brody into a dinosaur-hopping, gorilla-challenging hero in the altogether grand King Kong remake. The overall spectacle is too vast for Brody to spoil, but that doesn’t mean our eyes don’t roll every time he springs into unpersuasive action.

To be clear, Stephen Sommers’ mind-numbingly awful Van Helsing would’ve sucked even if he’d cast Daniel Day-Lewis as the titular monster slayer. Nothing about the movie—well, except sticking Kate Beckinsale in skintight period garb—was right, but giving heartthrob-to-housewives Jackman the reins was a massive failure in and of itself. Abraham van Helsing is supposed to be an older, weathered doctor, as is the case in Bram Stoker’s 1987 novel Dracula; Jackman looks like the guy who’d charm the pants off of the Dutch doc’s wife, not compete with him for a spot in the field of medicine.

Last year began a phase in Jake Gyllenhaal’s career that will hopefully end quicker than his courtship of Taylor Swift: Jake the Action Star. It’s a shame, really, since he’s a really good dramatic actor, as seen in flicks like Brokeback Mountain and Zodiac. Sometimes, though, big-name celebs get a bit too overzealous; in a bid to anchor a summer tentpole, Gyllenhaal tried playing the swashbuckling Persian prince at the center of producer Jerry Bruckheimer’s video game adaptation. Audiences didn’t exactly break cinema doors down to see him in action, proving that he’s not a big enough draw to commandeer a potential action franchise.

The Robin Hood that we read about in grade school was dashing, well-spoken, and even a bit graceful. Kevin Costner, however, has always conveyed a yokel-gone-mainstream vibe. An English nobleman he’s not, a sentiment that echoes throughout the otherwise acceptable Robin Hood: Prince Of Thieves even when we revisit today (especially when we hear his half-assed English accent). Under Costner’s jurisdiction, Robin Hood moves and acts like a good-old country boy wearing customary tights in order to knock boots with English prize Maid Marian.

Apparently, director Renny Harlin wanted his $115 million pirate adventure to sink faster than a torpedoed ship. There’s no other way to justify handing over your professional livelihood to a WASP-y non-entity like Matthew Modine, a guy who should’ve never gotten any closer to the action genre than his role in Stanley Kubrick’s excellent Full Metal Jacket. What, was Eric Stoltz too busy? Tack on the fact that the film itself did absolutely nothing right after its unfortunate casting and you’ve got one of Hollywood’s all-time biggest flops. You reap what you sow, Renny.

We wonder if Sir Anthony Hopkins even remembers that he once shot a movie with Chris Rock. The Academy Award-winning elder statesman has made so many flicks that it’s not unrealistic to suspect he’s forgotten about a few. Bad Company deserves such mental evaporation; not only was it a commercial failure, the Joel Schumacher-directed action-comedy also rested on the frail shoulders of Rock. If Will Smith were more accessible at the time, he would’ve been perfect as Hopkins’ counterpart, mainly because his acting doesn’t resemble a court jester trying to be taken seriously.

We know, we know—it seems like utter Channing Tatum hatred around here, but hear us out. We had no problems with the former model when he stepped it up in those dance flicks—that was harmless. But when Hollywood executives try to convince us that he’s worthy of certified guy properties (Spartacus-like epics, modernizations of toys we loved as rugrats), then we have a problem. For decades, men who still rifle through their figurine stash on off-nights were clamoring for a proper G.I. Joe feature film, yet 2009’s botched effort was doomed from the second Tatum was trusted with the biggest role. And look at what this casting nightmare hath wrought: Somewhere down the line, that cornball Taylor Lautner will play Stretch Armstrong. Meaning, that’s one more piece of childhood nirvana we’ll have to helplessly watch get tarnished.

Any chance to salivate over Mila Kunis while seated alone in a dark movie theater is more than fine with us. Sometimes, however, even the hottest of women can turn certain parts of a guy’s mind off, and Kunis does just that in the all-around wack Max Payne. Her character, Mona Sax, is a heart-attack-serious Russian assassin, a description that brings to mind Amazon woman Bridgette Nielsen back in her Red Sonja days; Kunis, on the other hand, is petite and angelic-faced. That’s like casting Snooki to play a female Sumo wrestler.

Even back in 2001, years before his career-defining turns in comedies like Wedding Crashers and The Royal Tenenbaums, Owen Wilson looked like a comedy star. He’s the kind of guy you want to have a beer with, or call upon as a wingman, not draft as a bullet-dodging naval badass. But in director John Moore’s survival pic, Wilson played a flight officer whose plane is shot down, leaving him stranded in war-torn Bosnia. Somehow, he battles through a hellstorm of conflict despite possessing zero gravitas or physical presence. The only war movie Wilson should ever headline is Hot Shots! Part Who-Gives-A-Damn.

Alexander the Great is one of history’s greatest warriors, a man who was undefeated in battle and led an entire Greek army by the time he was 30-years-old. For his supposed-to-be epic biopic, Oliver Stone needed an actor with an imposing presence, a guy you’d follow into combat without hesitation. So, yeah, someone like Colin Farrell, right? Not quite. The Irishman is someone we’d get into a fight with inside a tavern that has killer Guinness specials.

Make fun of us all you want, but we’re actually fans of Keira Knightley's stuffy period movies (no tampons). Elegant looking and surgical with classic dialect, the English thesp just looks downright comical holding shotguns, cursing up a storm, and pretending to be a ride-or-die chick. Tony Scott’s direction throughout the violent biopic Domino is so erratic that it’s easy to overlook Knightley’s princess-playing-make-believe demeanor, but the unintentional gag is still apparent.

Defecating on Reed Richards isn’t that hard to do, really. To be honest, it’s a jealousy thing. The Fantastic Four leader gets to bump and grind with the extra-hot Sue Storm and his superpower is the ability to stretch body parts to inhuman lengths (guess how we’d abuse that power). Since the character is so inherently hate-able, Welsh actor Ioan Gruffudd stepped into the part with an unavoidable handicap, but that’s the only slack we’ll cut for him. The reason why the movie version of Reed is so lame is because Gruffudd is an empty vessel, devoid of any personality. They might as well have had Jessica Alba tongue down a cardboard cut-out.

We’re the first to commend Ice Cube for his undeniably successful transition from hip-hop to cinema. After all, if he’d stuck with just rap, we would’ve never been blessed with the modern-day comedy classic Friday. And in Three Kings, his bid for action status worked because he was part of an ensemble, not the big cheese. But in once-great filmmaker John Carpenter’s putrid Ghosts of Mars, an unqualified Cube was tasked with being the flick’s Clint Eastwood-type hero, a clear sign that Carpenter was about to screw the pooch career-wise. The movie was such a bomb that the makers of 2005’s XXX: State Of The Union never even saw it. How else can one explain their decision to pick Cube as Vin Diesel’s replacement?

OK, so Ferris Bueller played a nerdy scientist/doctor in the horrendous remake of Godzilla—we get that. It’d be stupid to select a brute like Jean Claude Van Damme to portray a brilliant doc, and Broderick certainly looks the part. But when you’re pitting him against a dinosaur-like behemoth and a small army of baby ’zillas (don’t even get us started on how badly this flick ripped off Jurassic Park), you can’t really expect us to believe he’d ever survive. Not to mention, Broderick’s film career peaked nine years earlier in the outstanding Civil War pic Glory, so handing over a huge property like Godzilla to the guy was director Roland Emmerich’s first mistake. Making a piece-of-garbage film was his second, third, fourth, and fifth.

Russell Crowe in director Ridley Scott’s Gladiator—now there’s some perfect casting. Rugged yet still charismatic, Crowe owned every second of that Roman Empire-staged fight-fest. So what does Scott do for 2005’s 12th-Century-Crusades-set Kingdom Of Heaven, which was cut from the same brutish cloth as Gladiator? He opts to work with Crowe’s polar opposite: Orlando Bloom, a panty-waist who looks more like a beer wench than an armor-clad bruiser. Unsurprisingly, Kingdom Of Heaven was no Gladiator, mostly because it’s impossible to believe that a guy like Bloom could fight his way out of a paper bag, let alone slice through hordes of soldiers with a sword.

In the wake of her miserable reality show and her inopportune Charlie Sheen connection, it’s easy to forget that Denise Richards was once as desirable as Megan Fox. Thanks to her fantasy stature within the male community, casting directors convinced themselves that she could act, a misstep put on blast in pretty much every movie she’s ever made. Yet, none of Richards’ performances are nearly as laughable as her prominent role in the 19th James Bond flick, The World Is Not Enough, in which she played, get this, a nuclear physicist. We can imagine the casting director’s rationale: “Brains, boobs—really, what’s the difference, anyway?”

Yes, that Jay Leno. Early on in his career, the guy who backstabbed Conan O’Brien took himself seriously as an actor, or at we least assume he did. Maybe his thespian shots were some kind of elaborate Joaquin-Phoenix-is-a-rapper-like hoax. If so, then Pat Morita must’ve been in on the gag, too, or else he was just in need of a quick paycheck, because Mr. Miyagi actually signed on to bring down bad guys side-by-side with big-chinned Leno in the easy diss target of a folly Collision Course. It doesn’t take James Lipton to assess that Leno’s acting and “stunt-work,” a term we use lightly here, were funnier than any of his dialogue.