Cool movies come in many forms. There’s the sort of adrenaline-pumping badass moment that leaves you breathless and hollering at the screen. Think, for instance, of Arnold Schwarzenegger soaring through the air on his 780-pound Harley Davidson Fatboy in “Terminator 2”, Keanu Reeves dodging bullets and unleashing a barrage of gunfire in slow-mo in “The Matrix”, or a barrel-wielding Chow Yun-fat gunning down waves of triad thugs with a newborn baby in his arms as he leaps from a second-story hospital window in “Hard Boiled”.
And then there’s a subtler kind of coolness that sneaks up on you, like Elliot Gould casually striking matches on any available surface in “The Long Goodbye”, Sean Connery smooth delivery of “shaken, not stirred” as James Bond, two lonely drifters sharing a quiet motorbike ride at night in “Fallen Angels”, Paul Newman nonchalantly eating 50 hard-boiled eggs in an hour in “Cool Hand Luke”, or Kaneda’s iconic, often-imitated bike slide in “Akira”.
From horror-western hybrids to hard-boiled crime thrillers, in our books, the ten films listed below embody cinematic cool in every sense.
1. Escape from New York (1981)
“The name’s Plissken.”
Could No. 1 be anything else? Even in a decade that gave us the likes of John McClane, Mad Max, and Tony Montana (not to mention the freakin’ Terminator), Kurt Russell’s one-eyed, tough-as-nails ex-soldier convict in this dystopian caper by John Carpenter still stands a cut above the rest as the ultimate badass of 1980s cinema.
Armed with a MAC-10, a menacing eye patch, and a full deck of killer catchphrases, certified tough-guy Snake Plissken chews up the scenery and kicks major ass as he blasts his way through the island of Manhattan — now a fenced-off, maximum-security prison brimming with ruthless criminals — in a race against time to track down and rescue the US President within 24 hours in exchange for his own freedom.
It’s a knowingly trashy and quintessentially ’80s high-concept set-up that already sounds awesome on paper and translates exceptionally well on-screen. Throw in John Carpenter’s pulse-pounding synth score and a stacked line-up of Hall of Fame macho men including Lee Van Cleef and Isaac Hayes to the mix, and you got yourself S-tier popcorn entertainment that rises above its B-movie roots as the epitome of Eighties cool.
2. Le Samourai (1967)
When the late Alain Delon passed away on August 18, world cinema lost one of its most magnetic on-screen presences. The immortal French icon became synonymous with coolness, and rightly so, in no small part thanks to his timeless collaborations with genre specialist Jean-Pierre Melville, including this existential ’60s gangster thriller about a sleek, calculated contract killer by the name of Jef Costello who becomes a target himself after a job in Paris goes awry.
Leisurely paced and unflappably cool, “Le Samourai” re-defined gangster flicks and inspired an entire legion of directors across the pond from Michael Mann to Nicolas Winding Refn with a slick approach that observed its coolly detached lone wolf’s samurai-like code and obsessive routines in painstaking detail as we see him being tipped over the edge and hung out to dry by his employer.
Granted, it’s a stripped-down film with a drum-tight script and a long fuse that keeps the flash to a minimum, but Delon manages to pull the spotlight toward him and commands your attention in virtually every scene he’s in despite having little to no lines of dialogue. Movie-star charisma, you either have it, or you don’t.
3. Thief (1981)
To be fair, picking a Michael Mann movie at random would likely leave the average moviegoer describing it as ‘cool’, whether it’s his 1995 caper “Heat”, the early-aughts digital makeover of Miami Vice, or the nocturnal Tom Cruise vehicle “Collateral”. However, from this writer’s perspective, the benchmark had already been firmly set with his breakthrough debut, which saw Mann hit the bull’s-eye right out of the gate and staking his claim as the king of American action cinema by giving a number of classic genre conventions a fresh coat of paint.
Every frame is a painting in this mournful, ultra-stylized 1981 caper — shot entirely on-location in the rain-slick, neon-lit streets of Chicago — about a seasoned professional safecracker called Frank who takes on one last big score before leaving his criminal past behind him and turning over a new leaf with his new love bird (Tuesday Weld).
Boasting a healthy dosage of suspense and Tangerine Dream’s moody synth score, “Thief” is a solid onramp for Mann newbies that ticks off many of the trademark obsessions and stylish calling cards the director has accustomed us to. But it’s the icy lead performance by the late James Caan that sets the tone of the entire film and makes you fantasize about moonlighting as a bankrobber, or being able to rock the hell out of his wardrobe (including a $150 leather blouson jacket, $800 long-sleeved suit, and 3-carat ring) as well as he does. Yeah, good luck on that one.
4. Bullitt (1968)
Good (though hardly surprising) news: The movie your dad has watched roughly a thousand times on cable still holds up. Along with “The Great Escape” and “The Thomas Crown Affair”, this cornerstone of late-1960s American cinema directed by Peter Yates is a big reason why Steve McQueen remains one of the first names that comes to mind when we think of movie stars who simply ooze icy, cool charisma.
Appropriately dubbed the King of Cool, the legendary A-lister and auto racing enthusiast justifies his moniker and is an understated powerhouse as Frank Bullitt, a world-weary, cocksure San Francisco cop with nerves of steel who will stop at nothing to nab the cut-throat mobsters responsible for killing a key witness under his custody.
Keep this title on standby for when you’ve already binged through your Baby Drivers, Terminator 2s, and Fury Roads and are on the lookout for another thrillingly immersive, next-level car chase that’ll get your adrenaline juices pumping again and have you whooping at the screen. The fact that the rest of the film doesn’t quite live up to that glorious 11-minute sequence is hardly a knock, because by the time the next bravura set piece rolls in, it feels like the icing on the cake.
5. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966)
After cutting his teeth on the hit CBS series “Rawhide”, Clint Eastwood landed the role of a lifetime when he was cast in Sergio Leone’s trilogy of Italian Westerns as The Man with No Name — a poncho-clad lone gunslinger with a grim, steely gaze and lightning-fast draw who catapulted the American actor into global superstardom and immortalized him for decades to come as an enduring emblem of stoic cool and macho bravado.
Eastwood brought his A-game for the third and final installment of the saga — unanimously considered the best of the bunch — where he’s also potently flanked by genre stalwarts Lee Van Cleef and Eli Wallach as two thirds of a trio of ruthless bounty hunters on a deadly collision course as they hunt for $200,000 in stolen gold through the Civil War-ravaged old American frontier.
It’s practically a flawless movie all the way through, but future historians will claim that cinema coolness reached its zenith in the film’s iconic climax — a three-way Mexican standoff where tension boils over as Morricone’s ‘The Ecstasy of Gold’ plays at full blast. If movies ever get any better than that, we’d like to know.