Stone Cold can be purchased for an inexcusably exorbitant price on DVD at Amazon.
The Action/Adventure Section — A weekly column that will exclusively highlight and review action movies. The most likely suspects? Action cinema of the 1970s and 1980s. But no era will be spurned. As the column grows, the intent will be to re-capture the whimsy of perusing the aisles of your local video store with only ragingly kick ass cover art to aide you in your quest for sweaty action glory. Here we will celebrate the beefy. This is a safe place where we still believe that one lone hero can save humanity by sheer force of will and generous steroid usage.
STONE COLD (1991)
Taglines
- A cop who enforces his own brand of justice.
- He’ll burn you cold.
Sorry The Action/Adventure section had a small and unintended break there for a couple of weeks. With Summer travelling going on, it is hard to find the additional time needed to peruse the annals of action history for hidden gems to bring to you. But, at least for me, this week’s entry makes it worth the wait. I grew up with a working knowledge that someone named Brian Bosworth existed, played football, and had a super-iconic mullet. I’d always known that he had parlayed his bad boy image into an action film career as well, but it wasn’t until this week that I got my first taste of The Boz in all his action glory.
Star vehicles have always been a source of fascination for me, and they can be tricky beasts. For instance, I’m endlessly entertained by the fact that there was a certain time and place in which Howie Long or Joe Piscopo not only got roles in action films, but had action films DESIGNED around them. And there are tons of other examples of this kind of thing. You have to have some kind of spark, or draw, (or at least a great agent) to get a film tailor-made for you. But for as many The Rocks or Justin Timberlakes as there are in this world, there are far more Kurt Thomas’ (Gymkata) or Barbarian Twins (The Barbarians) who can’t seem to parlay their marketing machines into successful careers on the big screen.
One reason I feel that star vehicles can be dicey gambles for studios is that no one has a time machine that can tell them what stars will take off into the stratosphere and which ones will fizzle. I mean, Howie Long continues to be a household name as a sports commentator, so there may still be the occasional curious Firestorm viewer out there. But he didn’t become his own brand like a Van Damme or a Norris.
Neither did Brian Bosworth, but the guy has continued to work in film and star in low-budget action films as well as supporting roles in other works such as the Adam Sandler remake of The Longest Yard. Here in Stone Cold he makes his big screen debut and the film built around him is actually surprisingly lavish. With huge stunts and action set pieces, a killer supporting cast including Lance Henriksen and William Forsythe (who also featured prominently in Firestorm if I’m not mistaken), and a hard-R rating… Stone Cold isn’t messing around.
Bosworth plays a “tough as nails” cop who has to infiltrate a violent biker gang called “The Brotherhood” and take them down with his meticulously gathered evidence bare hands and bare chest.
From the opening set piece, I knew I would be in love with Stone Cold. We open with a grocery store robbery in progress. Hopped-up sleaze-bags can’t just rob a place, they have to start shooting guns and taking hostages. So when Boz’s character Joe Huff/John Stone shows up in a slow dolly shot from boots up to reveal perhaps cinema’s greatest non-Swayze mullet, you know he’s got it under control. Played for laughs, Bosworth taunts the criminals and might as well pull out ACME brand products to humorously dispose of these guys. Then immediately cue the angry police chief who reminds Huff that he is supposed to be on paid leave from his last big bust. Then somehow the Feds end up kind of blackmailing him into this whole biker gang adventure.
Like in every single undercover story in the history of undercover stories, Boz’s new persona Stone has to find an “in”, impress the man up top, jump through some hoops to prove his loyalty, and then it all has to get real by the end. Oh, and there also has to be a right hand man to the head henchman who REALLY doesn’t trust the new guy. Here, that henchman is William Forsythe, and the heavy is Lance Henriksen.
There are some bar fights, some drug deals, a little comedy relief with a super-undeveloped partner/contact that The Boz gets to roll his eyes at for being so puny and nerdy. Whatever, the middle part of the movie follows formula, and that is totally fine.
But the final act of Stone Cold is just off the rails crazy. And this is where I dig into some heavy spoiler territory as well. The finale of the film finds Henriksen’s Brotherhood mounting a full assault on an in-session courthouse where their plan is to… free one of their emprisoned brothers? Or something like that. This is one of those plans where you don’t really see the advantage for ANY of the bad guys at all and you figure if these weren’t movie villains they would totally still be chillin’ at their biker club house and sending a cake to their brother who is going to prison.
But this is Lance Henriksen we are talking about here, and we get an awesome moment where his previously shaggy-haired and biker-duded villain sneaks his way into the courthouse by posing as a clean-cut priest. He then busts out a friggin’ machine gun and totally mows down a ton of people in the courtroom. His whole biker gang lays siege to the place and there is this spectacularly staged battle scene that turns into a mini-Die Hard type of situation. There are bikers driving all around the courthouse and The Boz shows up in a big old helicopter. Seriously, the action direction here is quite impressive, with helicopters and motorcycles and tons of extras running every which way (see above trailer for a taste.)
But here’s the totally bizarre thing about Stone Cold: Before Stone ultimately puts a bullet in Lance Henriksen, he pretty much systematically fails at everything else. The Brotherhood FULLY succeeds in infiltrating the courthouse, killing all the judges and lawyers who were going to imprison their brother. Shoot, even the girl that Stone had started to fall for and promised to protect gets offed. To paint a more accurate picture, what if John McClane had crawled around in ventilation shafts until Hans Gruber killed every single hostage in Nakatomi Plaza… and then jumped out and killed Gruber at the end? That is kind of what goes down at the end of Stone Cold. But it isn’t treated that way in the script. He sort of gets a pat on the back and has a sweet, long-take walk off into the credits at the end. His basic failure to save lives or bring about any sort of actual justice isn’t addressed at all. I think the movie wants us to think our hero cop is totally awesome at the end, too. Like… we are kind of supposed to forget that this biker gang totally massacred dozens of people and that Stone probably could have prevented it with a little genuine, non-action-movie police work.
This is the kind of thing that I find hilarious enough that I come full circle on it. I love the movie even more than I would have if the ending had made any kind of sense or offered any kind of real justice. Action movies aren’t where I go to meditate on what is right in the world, they are where I go to see a former football player’s mullet blow in the wind of a flying helicopter while he wrastles with some evil bikers. And Stone Cold gave me that.
As with each of my Action/Adventure Section entries, I poke around a little bit to see what I can find about the creation of this film. And I found some exciting stuff. Stone Cold is directed by Craig R. Baxley. Though I wasn’t familiar with the name, I would gladly dub him action-movie royalty after just a brief perusal of his IMDB filmography.
I spent some time working for ActionFest a little while back and came to a higher level of appreciation for stunt men, stunt coordinators, and the entire world of creating action on the big screen. To me, stunt coordinators are some of the most underappreciated artists and filmmakers in the business. And it is extremely rare for stunt people to rise up “above the line” to become directors or producers in their own right, even though many of them direct second units all the time. I bring all this up because Craig R. Baxley is one of those people who did come from a vetted stunt background and rose up to become a steady-working director. He has even served as President of Stunts Unlimited, one of the most elite stunt organizations in the world. In more recent years his directing has been almost totally for the small screen with such titles as Leverage, Human Target, and Rose Red. But the reason I would bestow legendary status upon the man is that he has spent decades in the business bringing us quality entertainment… and was the stunt coordinator for both Predator and The Warriors, two of the finest action films ever committed to celluloid. And once he jumped up into directing, he brought us a trifecta of Action Jackson, I Come In Peace, and then Stone Cold. Hat Trick!
And before I dug up all this golden information, I would have told you that the direction on display in Stone Cold is truly top notch. The production value, cast, and action choreography of Stone Cold are really pushing A-list. And that is simply fascinating for a star vehicle like this one. Today you wouldn’t be able to pull off a hard-R, huge set-piece film like this without a vetted star and a young adult fiction novel you could adapt it from.
And before I sign off, I also have to give props to the man himself, The Boz. This is a pretty spectacular screen debut for the guy. He displays a ton more charisma than lots of action stars who made dozens of films. Sure, his mullet takes care of at least 50% of that charisma for him, but that mullet was still his idea! The guy looks like an action star, sounds like an action star, and right around the time of Stone Cold, I’m sure he had all that it took to go to the next level. Who knows why Bosworth’s star didn’t get a chance to shine quite as bright as some other on-screen heroes. But if I were Bosworth, I’d be more than a little proud of Stone Cold. And as an action cinema fan, I’m going to have to recommend this movie. Sure, there is a totally bizarre script with some massive tonal imbalances, but if you’ve got an eye for top notch stunt work and a hankerin’ for a little Henriksen, you could do a whole lot worse than Stone Cold.
PS: Oh, and lest I forget… Bosworth’s character owns a Komodo Dragon. Because that is a totally responsible pet for an undercover biker cop to own.
And I’m Out.