Hey, guys. Quint here. Sunday evening we got word that one of the more intimidating onscreen actors working today, Powers Boothe, passed away. There was some hope for a hot minute that his death was a hoax, but his publicist has confirmed that the man did pass away peacefully in his sleep.
Now it's super late, but I wanted to say a few things about the man before I called it a night.
Broadly, Powers Boothe was a man's man kind of actor. Throughout his career he played good guys, complicated guys and some flat out down and dirty rotten bastards. When he was playing a good guy, like in John Milius' Red Dawn, you felt like the light side stood a chance because he was tough as nails and a force to be reckoned with. When he played a bad guy... well, you felt like the good guys were kinda screwed.
A perfect example of that is his portrayal of Curly Bill Brocius in Tombstone. When Boothe wanted you to love to hate him you were powerless to think any other way. He's such a raging, mean dickhead in that movie.
People will likely remember him for playing that kind of part, thanks to Tombstone and Sin City and his more recent turns as a heavy Hydra honcho in Agents of SHIELD, but my favorite performances of his are when he combined his intimidating personality and southern charm.
I already mentioned Red Dawn, which is still awesome and oddly more timely now than it has been since its release, where he plays a US Colonel who joins with the Wolverines and mentors them in how to fight off the Ruskies.
Boothe's character in that movie is a hardass, but a hardass on our side.
He took a similar tact with another movie a few years earlier, Walter Hill's SOUTHERN COMFORT.
In Southern Comfort he's part of the Louisiana National Guard who are out doing training exercises when they're beset upon by some crazy killer cajuns, leaving them running for their lives through the swamps.
It's a dark movie, filled to the brim with great character actors, but still Boothe manages to be the one you remember. He's a bit paranoid, he doesn't take shit, but also doesn't lose his head when their backs are against the wall, like so many of the squad do.
The final 10 minutes of that movie is a masterclass in escalating tension and so much of that is sold almost exclusively on Boothe acting his ass off without saying a word as he silently surveys a small cajun community where the folks who hunted him the whole movie might be holed up in.
The early to mid '80s were his most impressive screen acting years, starting with a TV movie he did where he played infamous cult leader Jim Jones called Guyana Tragedy: The Story of Jim Jones.
I'm sure that off-kilter, but charming performance is what really caught the eye of Hollywood and he got Southern Comfort, A Breed Apart (with Rutger Hauer), Red Dawn and John Boorman's The Emerald Forest, about a dam engineer working in the rain forest whose son is abducted by a local tribe and his multi-year quest to find him.
This is a particularly fascinating movie for Boothe fans because he's the lead and he gets a bunch of meaty scenes to chew on.
At this time he also had a very successful run at playing legendary detective Philip Marlowe on TV (Philip Marlowe, Private Eye).
The late '80s and early '90s had him doing some more schlocky stuff, but (mostly) good schlocky stuff, like Rapid Fire with Brandon Lee.
His later career saw him used a bit better, starting with Oliver Stone's U-turn, but really hitting his stride again in the aughts with his turn as Cy Tolliver on Deadwood, one of the only screen presences that could actually stand up to Ian McShane.
Boothe also got a juicy, mustache twirling villain role in Robert Rodriguez's Sin City. It's not a large part, but his Senator Roark is the evil presence hanging over the entire movie.
Much of his later career is defined by the bad guys he played (including voicing some DC villains like Gorilla Grodd in Justice League Unlimited), but my favorite turns of his in recent times showed him a softer light.
It's tough to talk about it now because Bill Paxton's early death is still fresh in my mind, but damn was Frailty good and Boothe was great in it. I say he played a softer character in it and I'm only being a teeny deceitful by saying that. He's an FBI agent on the case of a serial killer who listens to an odd man's even odder story about being raised by a man who believed demons were real and it was their duty to destroy them. The ending of the movie paints Boothe's character in a bit of a different light than you first see him in, but his performance is that of a good man.
The other more recent-ish part that immediately jumps to mind is that of Colonel Faith in MacGruber. It's a silly, silly, silly, silly movie and he plays a silly character in it, that of the typical hard-ass army man boss, but damn did he sell it. Not just the hard-ass part, but the comedy as well. It's a performance every bit as good as Lloyd Bridges' turn in Airplane, if not as flashy.
Boothe was a rare breed, cut from the same cloth as actors like Steve McQueen and Robert Shaw and Lee Marvin. That kind of type isn't much around anymore. We lost a big chunk cinema history when Boothe passed.
My thoughts this week will be with Mr. Boothe's friends, family and fans.
-Eric Vespe
”Quint”
quint@aintitcool.com
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