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By now, almost everyone knows the basics of the Kurt Russell story: one-time teen star of many goofy, throwaway flicks of the late '60s, such as The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes and The Barefoot Executive, all of which were churned out by Disney at a rate of about two a week. Then, with the help of John Carpenter and after a brief stab at professional baseball, the thirty-year-old Russell improbably managed to morph into an action star, first in 1980's Escape from New York and then in The Thing, released the very next year. Then he followed up those two films with a fine turn in the serious drama Silkwood. In other words, things, circa 1983, looked pretty good for Kurt Russell, who had not only survived child stardom (no mean feat) but was actually establishing himself as an action star with some emotional chops. Not exactly Pacino, but an enjoyable screen presence with above-average range. Believe it or not, circa 1983, he was looking a little bit like Russell Crowe, circa 2001.
Of course, Kurt Russell, circa 2001, is playing sidekick to Kevin Costner in a movie about casino-robbing Elvis impersonators that got out-earned in its opening weekend by Recess: School's Out. Somehow, between 1983 and now, Kurt Russell got himself permanently assigned to Hollywood's leading-man B-list, perched on a rung of the ladder not close to the Stallones and Costners and Willises and, now, Crowes of the world, but rather in the company of the Alec Baldwins and Jeff Danielses and Bill Paxtons -- the kind of second-choice, bargain-rate heroes that end up in movies like...well, Stargate and Breakdown and Soldier, and playing second fiddle to A-list stars like...well, Kevin Costner.
So what happened? It could be that Russell's attempts at comedy -- the ill-fated Swing Shift in 1984, followed not too long after by the unpleasant boat-themed duo of Overboard and Captain Ron -- derailed his promising action-hero career. Or maybe one could blame his liaison, right around 1983, with Goldie Hawn; we're big fans of love and happiness and all, but, sad as it is to say, sometimes when an Alpha Male hooks up with a more famous, more highly regarded Alpha Female, Hollywood suddenly starts seeing him as Beta List material. Or maybe it was simple familiarity that did him in; Russell's made a number of fine films, but he's never had that one breakout blockbuster that would enshrine him as an over-the-title leading man. Furthermore, he's always reliable but never spectacular, and he's been around long enough that he's not going to go away but he's also not likely to break out to a whole new level of fame -- a condition known in medical circles as "Quaid-Bridges Syndrome."
All of which is a shame, because if you put Kurt Russell up against most of the leading men of the '80s or '90s, we'd take Russell over almost all of them. (One exception being, well, the other Russell we mentioned earlier.) Why? Because Kurt Russell has always displayed an engaging ability to both play the macho hero and simultaneously undermine himself for comic effect. Take, for example, 1986's Big Trouble in Little China, likely Russell's best film. While it fizzled in theatrical release (I only saw it because it was the back-end of a double-feature at a rep theatre with Space Camp), it's gained a cult following on video, largely because of Russell's intentionally hammy hero, Jack Burton. Russell displays a comic agility that none of his action-hero contemporaries -- Stallone? Schwarzenegger? -- would even have attempted, let alone pulled off.
Of course, Russell's career on the whole has been spotty -- for every Big Trouble in Little China, Tombstone, and The Thing, there's been a Backdraft, Tango & Cash and Executive Decision -- but you can't help feeling, looking back, that he was always just one Rocky or Top Gun or Bull Durham away from leaping onto the leading-man short list. Then again, he's spent twenty years on the leading-man long list, and that doesn't exactly suck.
In closing, we'd like to point out that Kurt Russell may have had the coolest film debut in cinematic history. Granted, we've never seen 1963's It Happened at the World's Fair, but, as far as we're concerned, anyone who is credited in his very first screen role as "Boy Who Kicks Elvis" deserves an immediate fame top-up, no questions asked.
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