Step Aside, Rambo: Here Come the Ordinary Heroes

Oscar-winning director Oliver Stone is known for making movies that explore unconventional heroes, from paralyzed Vietnam antiwar activist Ron Kovic in “Born on the Fourth of July” to New Orleans District Atty. Jim Garrison in “JFK.”

But when Stone looks back at the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on America, he can fully understand why moviegoers over the years have embraced larger-than-life heroes like Superman and Arnold Schwarzenegger who single-handedly save the day.

“I do miss Superman,” Stone said. “I wish he were there on Sept. 11. He would fly in just as those buildings were about to fall. I would like to see what would happen. I still love Arnold. I’d love to see him protect America from all that stuff.”

From Schwarzenegger in “Predator” and Sylvester Stallone as Rambo in “First Blood” to Steven Seagal in “Under Siege” and Bruce Willis in “Die Hard,” the modern superhero with chiseled jaw, bulging biceps and enough firepower to mow down small armies has become a staple of American pop culture. But on Sept. 11, a different kind of hero took center stage as hundreds of firefighters, police officers and ordinary citizens laid down their lives for others.

Randall Wallace, who wrote the screenplay for the 1995 Oscar-winning “Braveheart,” noted that in frivolous times, we build up heroes and then destroy them, but “a real hero is not asking for somebody else’s approval.”

Wallace is directing the Mel Gibson Vietnam War film “We Were Soldiers.” It’s based on the real-life heroism of platoon leader Rick Rescorla, who led 395 American soldiers into a valley surrounded by thousands of North Vietnamese.

“It was a desperate, horrible fight,” Wallace said, “but one of the things that made this man heroic was that he always put his men first.”

Rescorla and his men in B Company, 2nd Battalion, 7th U.S. Cavalry would win that fight, and Rescorla would receive the Silver Star for his bravery and leadership. But in a tragic twist of fate, he later became head of security at Morgan Stanley Dean Witter and was killed last month in the collapse of the World Trade Center.

“When the plane hit, they were told to stay where they were, and Rescorla said no, he was going to get his people out,” Wallace said. “He did, but went back up and was last seen around the 90th floor trying to get wheelchair people out. That is a hero to me.”

Heroes have been a key ingredient of movies since the dawn of cinema.

Who can forget John Wayne leading his men up Mt. Suribachi in “The Sands of Iwo Jima”? Or Gary Cooper standing alone on a dusty street as the minutes tick away and a train whistle heralds the arrival of four gunmen in “High Noon”? Or Leonardo DiCaprio comforting the woman he loves as the doomed ocean liner “Titanic” sinks beneath the waves?

Yet our cinematic heroes--particularly the comic-book action genre--bear little resemblance to our real-life heroes.

Tom Casalini, an Indiana photographer who presents a collection of 48 haunting portraits of Congressional Medal of Honor recipients in his book “Ordinary Heroes,” said society needs escapist entertainment, but the fictional superheroes that Hollywood serves up year after year are not at all like the Medal of Honor recipients he came to know.

“When I started meeting them, they referred to themselves as ordinary guys doing their duty,” Casalini recalled.

“The more you get into talking with these men, the more you realize that there is a kind of link between ordinary and hero. They were simply guys doing their duty. Because of the actions of their duty, other people deemed them as heroes. Then they all returned to normal life. They weren’t superstars like we have in baseball. Nobody knew who they were.

The photographer believes Hollywood does a fairly good job of portraying heroes on the big screen, although he views the ultimate-warrior, super-macho action heroes as creations that are “strictly for entertainment purposes.” What the real-life heroes seem to share, he added, is a common humility.

“ These Medal of Honor recipients--the real Rambos, the guys who did it in real life--say they are embarrassed to have their citations read in public,” Casalini added. “They say, ‘If that is all I’m remembered for in life, that’s sad. Now, if you want to know what is important in my life, I’ll tell you.”’

Stone noted that heroes are often very complex and sometimes even flawed human beings.

“Heroes are complex people because life is complex,” he said, noting that even though he doesn’t fit the conventional model of a hero, Jim Garrison will always be a hero to him.

“Jim Garrison was very much a hero,” Stone said. “Whatever they say about him being flawed, he had iron will.... He went after a very complicated, basically covert operation case in the ‘60s when you couldn’t get information on covert operations. He took on a big dragon, and they tried to wreck his career.”

The theme of the flawed hero runs through many classic Hollywood films.

In John Ford’s 1956 western “The Searchers,” John Wayne’s Ethan Edwards is a racist who hates Indians. And, as Tom Doniphon in Ford’s 1962 western “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance,” Wayne burns down the house he builds for the girl he loves after learning she intends to marry the town lawyer, played by Jimmy Stewart.

Moviegoers have always identified with antiheroes.

There was Jack Nicholson as private eye Jake Geddes, a man as murky as the Raymond Chandleresqe world that he inhabits, in “Chinatown.” Clint Eastwood as the title character in “Dirty Harry,” a cop who doesn’t go by the rules. And, more recently, Benicio Del Toro as the plainclothes narc in “Traffic.”

“There has always been an antihero,” said Tony Macklin, author of “Voices From the Set,” a collection of interviews with great Hollywood figures in front of and behind the camera. “You can go back to Bogart. He was a hero in his own way, but he wasn’t handsome and he wasn’t tall. He had come out of playing rats. He actually morphed into a hero.

“There has always been an appeal of the outlaw,” he continued. “You look at many of these heroes and they are outside the law. Dirty Harry is a perfect example. He’s a hero who threw away his badge at the end, who didn’t obey the laws, and the only way he could beat Scorpio was not playing by the rules.”

But with the events of Sept. 11 still raw in our minds, Hollywood’s creative community is grappling with how to portray heroes onscreen after so many ordinary heroes perished at the World Trade Center and in the skies over Pennsylvania.

Jonathan Mostow, who is about to direct “Terminator 3” and last year directed the hit World War II submarine thriller “U-571,” said anybody who writes fiction for a living is now asking himself if the events of Sept. 11 have rendered their characters trivial.

“Just living in our country nowadays requires a certain amount of heroism,” Mostow said.

“Just to soldier on and keep living your life with the sword of Damocles hanging over your head requires a certain amount of courage.... I think what creative people are trying to figure out is, should whatever particular story I am working on reflect that or are people wanting to go the movies and escape?”

Producer and screenwriter Dean Devlin, whose films include “Independence Day” and “The Patriot,” believes the action superhero of the 1980s and early 1990s was already being replaced by “real heroes” who bear more resemblance to people around us before Sept. 11.

“When we first saw [the superheroes] on film, it was something we hadn’t seen before,” Devlin said. “They were comic book characters come to life. But I think the reason why Harrison Ford can do action movie after action movie is that you really feel that this is a guy you know, this is a guy who could be you.”

Jerry Bruckheimer, producer of such action films as “Armageddon” and “Pearl Harbor,” believes that times change, but the need for heroes doesn’t.

“We’re always looking for heroes, going back to Greek mythology,” Bruckheimer said. “The world has changed, but heroes haven’t.” *