Samuel L. Jackson vs. Laurence Fishburne
Battle Of The Righteous, Honey-Voiced Inspirations

First of all, let if be said that we here at Fametracker are very sympathetic to the dilemmas facing black actors in Hollywood. Particularly those facing successful black actors, who've proved their merits time and again, and yet are still faced with a disheartening paucity of roles.

This dilemma is further exacerbated by the actors' apparent and understandable desire to forward positive messages through their films, and to avoid playing exactly the kind of stereotypes they were forced to embrace when they were unknown and had to, you know, make a living and all.

That said.

We certainly don't want either Laurence Fishburne or Samuel L. Jackson to dry up and blow away. To the contrary: we've enjoyed them both in their most famous, most nuanced roles -- say, Boyz N the Hood and Pulp Fiction respectively -- and even revel in their pulpier performances -- say, The Matrix and Pulp Fiction, respectively. And we're always glad when they're in a movie. Does Fishburne's presence, for example, in Assault on Precinct 13 make us more or less likely to see it? More likely. Certainly more likely than does Ethan Hawke's presence. And waaaay more likely than does John Leguizamo's.

That said.

At this point, with the kinds of roles they're choosing, do we really need them both? (And we won't even drag the wondrous, saintly Morgan Freeman into this, since he's found a nice niche for himself playing God, the President, or deified janitors.) Or, put another way, couldn't one of them occasionally take a challenging, morally ambivalent role, rather than snoozing through some throwaway action flick (Fishburne: Biker Boyz; Jackson: XXX) or headlining what feels like an two-hour afterschool special (Jackson: Coach Carter; Fishburne: ...uh, well, we guess Osmosis Jones doesn't really count)?

Black male actors, when they reach a certain level of stardom, seem reluctant, for whatever reason, to play bad. Denzel gets to do it because he's Denzel -- and when he does do it, we're so flabbergasted and amazed that we give him an Oscar.

Jackson, the Bad Motherfucker himself, hasn't come close to bad motherfucking since Unbreakable and Shaft in 2000. Fishburne actually has the more interesting career -- at least he got to be all Actorly, if underused, in Mystic River -- but the less interesting résumé, littered as it now is with various Matrix films in which he intoned, in his honeyed voice, about wisdom and sacrifice and The One. But remember Ike Turner? Now that was a role with some teeth. As well as some fists and some boots.

Again, we don't blame them -- though Jackson in particular seems to have fashioned a comfy seat of laurels, which he's now quite happy to set upon, in between rounds of golf. We just wish that every once in awhile they'd get to play something other than paragons of virtue. Given their talents, these kinds of roles are insulting to them -- sort of in the way that magazines, when including black actors in some big photographic portfolio, all too often photograph the black actors in black and white, wearing black turtlenecks, to highlight their natural Dignity, in an act of cheesy veneration that ends up feeling vaguely patronizing and creepy.

That said.

Couldn't Larry Fishburne have played Coach Carter? Couldn't poor, underused Delroy Lindo? For that matter, couldn't Gene Hackman -- in fact, didn't he, in Hoosiers?

Hackman manages to (a) sleepwalk pleasingly on the virtues of his strengths; (b) get paid; and (c) still throw an Oscar-calibre role in the mix every so often. But then Hollywood seems to have many more various uses for an aged cranky white guy than it has for any black guy.

Advantage: Samuel L. Jackson, simply because he seems more willing to keep himself out there with random MTV award-show hosting gigs, and who, honestly, can cost on Pulp Fiction for another ten years if he damn well pleases.