ROOT: The Clint Eastwood Factor

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George N. Root III is a Lockport resident. His column appears every Wednesday. Contact him at georgeroot@verizon.net.

February 21, 2011

The Lockport Union-Sun %26 Journal Mon Feb 21, 2011, 12:36 AM EST

— I post a Clint Eastwood quote on my Facebook page every day. Everyone asks me why.

My answer is a challenge: Name me an American actor since Clint who has his charisma and talent, and I will post them, too.

Yes, I said it: Clint Eastwood has talent.

I get blank looks when I say that, and then I get a long list of attempted answers. Sylvester Stallone? No, not even close. Harrison Ford? Kind of close, but not enough snarl to him. Johnny Depp? Maybe, but this raises an interesting question. Where are the American acting heroes of the new generation?

So far, the only ones I have seen are Shia LaBeouf and Angelina Jolie. And I am pretty sure that Angelina would mess Shia up something fierce in a real piece of hand-to-hand combat. But where are the heroes for the new generation? Angelina is not really from the “new” generation. If you want to know how deep the void in the American acting landscape is, just take a look at who is getting the new movie roles.

We can go back a few years to when Christian Bale was named as the new Batman. I love Christian Bale as Batman, but Bale is Welsh. A Welsh Batman? The new Spider-Man (the hyphen is mandatory) is British actor Andrew Garfield. Well, Garfield was born in the States but grew up in England. Thor will be played by Aussie Chris Hemsworth.

I guess I have no problem with Thor being Australian. But it is just a bit disturbing that Batman and Spider-Man are not American. Thank God that Captain America is being played by the Massachusetts-born-and-raised Chris Evans. Otherwise there would have been all kinds of problems with this summer’s drive-in movie schedule.

Are we ever going to see another era like we did from the 1970s to the 1990s? Will there ever be another time when people like Clint Eastwood, Gene Hackman, Harrison Ford and Al Pacino are at the height of their powers? Marlon Brando passed the torch on to Robert De Niro. Who can De Niro pass it on to? When Johnny Depp gets to be too old to play a drunken pirate with any conviction, who will take his place?

I go to a lot of movies, folks. Any movie you see advertised from April to October, I usually see. We now have Netflix streaming through the Wii, so we can keep watching movies all year long. We love movies, and we love good movies. The wife and I will go see a movie just because Johnny Depp is in it, or just because Angeline Jolie is in it. Why? Because those are American actors who know how to turn any role into something the audience will remember.

There just seems to be a lull in the quality of American acting coming out of Hollywood. But that only stands to reason because there is a lull in the quality of the movies coming out of Hollywood, as well. That is why people like Clint Eastwood start their own production companies; to avoid the garbage being thrown around Hollywood these days.

How many scripts do you think De Niro’s agent has to go through before he finds one worthy of giving to the great Robert? But, even De Niro is being slammed around by the bad movie epidemic. Have you seen any of these Fockers movies? Yesh. Stuff like that gets all the press, while De Niro’s performance in “Machete” never even got a review.

So this is my callout to other movie fans. If you are seeing something I am not seeing, then please let me know. I am afraid that my twilight years will be spent watching horrible scripts acted out by watered-down talent with bad foreign accents. Who are the new great American actors? I used to think that Leonardo DiCaprio was on his way to that Clint Eastwood status until I actually saw “Inception” and “Shutter Island.”

I know I always have a cynical tone to my writing, but not this time. I want to find that new acting talent that motivates me to go to the movies. I go to the movies all spring, summer and fall anyways. But if the choice is between a Johnny Depp movie and anything by M. Night Shyamalan, then I will take the Johnny Depp movie every time. Who should I be watching out for? What new, young American actor looks to be the next great thing?

I love a great movie. But I need to know that Hollywood is not in the process of being outsourced to a foreign country along with everything else.

George N. Root III is a Lockport resident. His column appears every Wednesday. He can be reached at georgeroot@verizon.net.

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