Keep clear of the moors

Evil English?

I love movies. And it seems that in movies now a days everyone wants to make their villain English.  What is it about the English that makes them so good at being the bad guy?  Maybe it's the setting that makes them so good at being evil?  One of my all time favorite movies is An American Werewolf in London.

Now this movie doesn't really have a bad guy unless you consider it to be the werewolf.  And the werewolf is an American, but the setting is a huge part of this movie.  Keep clear of the moors!

Moving on, how about the movie Die Hard.  The bad guy may have been supposedly German, but he spoke with an English accent and was played by an English actor.  Hans Gruber was played by Alan Rickman, an actor born right in jolly old London!  (He also played Professor Snape in the Harry Potter movies, but then everyone was English in those, weren't they?)

Doesn't he look evil?  And with that English accent, everything he says seems to come across as so smooth!  Dark sided and English, what a combo!  I'm certain he's a really nice guy in person, but I really love the evil characters he's played.  Mr. Rickman also played Alexander Dane in a very entertaining movie called Galaxy Quest.  He played a classical English actor stuck in a role for a horrible American space television series that had been off the air for years (Think Star Trek).  He had some fantastic lines in this one!  Good guy or bad guy, some of these actors and actresses get the best lines!

My latest favorite is from a movie I saw only last night.  It's called Oblivion and stars Tom Cruise.  Yes Tom is American, but one of his co-stars in the movie is Andrea Riseborough, born in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, England.  (What a great name for a village!)  

I won't spoil the surprise about her character, but as you watch the movie, she doesn't seem quite right.  You can't put your finger on what it is, but there is something funny going on with her.  And she does such a good job in the roll, that until the secret is revealed, you never see it coming.  At least I didn't see it coming.  She even goes so far as to shed real tears in the roll.  Fantastic actress!

In the movie The Great Escape most of the English prisoners who are recaptured at the end are executed.  This was pretty true to life during World War II and the film was based on a true story.  You get to know a number of these guys throughout the movie and it's horrible when they're shot!  

Now we've moved on from English actors being a fantastic villain to English actors just being fantastic!  *chuckle*  There are some pretty talented Brits out there!  Here's one more old movie with a lot of English actors in it.  I haven't seen this one in years, and there's only one token American main character in it.  It's Sylvester Stallone.  The movie has not only English, but also some European soccer players.  It's about how a bunch of World War II prisoners of war end up challenging the Germans to a soccer match.  They plan to escape during the match, but as the movie goes on the match grows more and more important to them.  You'd think it would be cheesy and have a horrible plot, but this one is actually pretty good!  It's called Victory in America, and Escape to Victory in other parts of the world.  If you get the chance to see this one and have the slightest interest in soccer (Or World War II movies) this comes highly recommended!

So I guess the point of this blog is to tell how much I've been enjoying English acting lately!  *chuckle*  They're getting some good roles now a days.  So support an English actor if you know one (Or English writer, I have a few of them for friends!), they're absolutely brilliant!