' ' Cinema Romantico: The Cinema Romantico Action Hero Championship Belt

Wednesday, April 02, 2014

The Cinema Romantico Action Hero Championship Belt

You might have heard that Bill Simmons, The Sports Guy, Grantland founder, recently threw up a mammoth article on his site in which he re-imagined the Action Movie Star as a sort of Heavyweight Champion. His argument is that the Hollywood action hero as we know him and her began in 1968 with Steve McQueen's "Bullit" and so he goes from there, naming champion after champion. It's a typical Simmons list, not at all wholly inaccurate, but spotty on its real movie history (such as giving the belt to Jackie Chan for "Rush Hour 3" as opposed to any of his Hong Kong efforts) and littered with head-scratching decisions such as Sylvester Stallone re-claiming the belt in 1996 for "Daylight" (wait, what?).

His list, as it had to, got me to thinking. It got me to thinking: what if Cinema Romantio had its own Action Hero Championship Belt? You know, like this blog was a fly-by-night fringe boxing council - The Kremlin-Calexico International Boxing Federation - that awarded its own title belt that absolutely nobody - including the recipients, who would in all likelihood decline it - took seriously or even paid attention to? A champion's list that made people reading it think, "Who the hell made this list? What is with this guy?" Ah, now that sounds like the Cinema Romantico Action Hero Championship Belt!

ac·tion he·ro
     1. Ineffable
      "that's my favorite action hero!"

The Cinema Romantico Action Hero Championship Belt (established 1977)


Harrison Ford. 1977 - 1988.
For: "Star Wars Trilogy", "Raiders of the Lost Ark."


Bruce Willis. 1988 - 1992.
For: "Die Hard."


Daniel Day-Lewis. 1992 - 1998.
For: "Last of the Mohicans."


Robert DeNiro. 1998 - 2000.
For: "Ronin."


Zhang Ziyi. 2000 - 2003.
For: "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon."


Johnny Depp. 2003 -  2005.
For: "Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl."


Matt Damon. 2005 - 2010.
For: "The Bourne Supremacy", "The Bourne Ultimatum."


Angelina Jolie. 2010 - Present.
For: "Salt" (and general contributions to global badassery)

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