Oiled muscle-men firing off one-liners while mowing armies of bad guys with a machine gun in one hand. There is something deeply reassuring in the action movies of old. They played by the rules that everybody understood. The hero stands alone. The odds are absurd. The outcome is never in doubt.
In some respects, classic action movies are very much like card games. While multiplayer shooters or large immersive RPGs require emotional investment and endless upgrades until you or they get good, card games like poker or solitaire rely on a certain kind of rules-based detachment that made these movies great.
But not all action stars were cut from the same cloth, just as not all card games are created equal. Which is the closest to which? Let’s find out.
Arnold Schwarzenegger: The Blackjack Powerhouse
Blunt force efficiency wrapped in a math-based inevitability? That’s the big Arnie for you. That’s also blackjack in a nutshell, a game based on math, simple hand gestures, and exuding quiet confidence.
Schwarzenegger made a career out of these three. He speaks little, acts a lot, and brings a sense of mathematical inevitability to every shot he’s in. This holds true for the likes of Terminator and Commando, as well as critically-bombed Raw Deal. Hell, even the man himself has an air of playing the Hollywood game the right way.
Sylvester Stallone: The Solitaire Specialist
As the name suggests, solitaire is played one-on-one: just you, the game, and whatever stands in between. Stallone personified.
Sylvester is the original lone survivor of the action genre, best exemplified in his trappings as Rambo and Marion Cobretti. While these roles may seem loud for a familiar game, you can play solitaire with as much active execution as Rambo evading captures in the woods outside Hope, Washington. Games like Solitaire Grand Harvest are played on your own, but can also be loud and fun and rabidly over-the-top like classic Stallone flicks.
Dolph Lundgren: Hi-Lo Merchant
Who better to exemplify the “my card beats yours” mentality than Stone Face Dolph!
Whether as Ivan Drago, in Rocky IV, or the relentless force in Masters of the Universe, Lundgren’s screen presence screams physical dominance. Even the Imagine Dragons video of their hit song “Believer”.
Hi-Lo card games are similar. There’s no grand strategy, just who’s got the bigger card. There’s something almost hypnotic in its simplicity. An almost palpable sense of escalation towards the moment when one side clearly overpowers the other. The winner is obvious. No rematch required to settle the score.
Jean-Claude Van Damme: The Three-Card Monte
Flash. Misdirection. Speed. The three traits that made Van Damme such an icon of classic action cinema.
Like three-card monte, his appeal rests on the control of attention. You think you’re watching one thing, but the real action happens half a second later, somewhere else entirely. A spin kick you didn’t see coming. A sudden shift in balance. A strike that lands before your brain catches up. A Lady that pops out of nowhere.
Bruce Willis: Poker Personified
Not all 80s action heroes looked like they were carved out of marble.
Bruce Willis, especially in Die Hard, brought vulnerability, improvisation, and stone-cold sarcasm that inspired countless Bruce Willis memes. He’s never the biggest guy in the room, nor is he the flashies. He’s the one figuring things out as the room falls apart. Poker taking on a human form.
Instead of exacting brute force, poker reading people, managing risk, and knowing when to push and when to hold. Folding? It is always just a means to an end.
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