Is There Life in Shoot-to-Thrill?

By RICHARD SCHICKEL

Bruce Willis has based his career on apologizing for being a man. Robert De Niro has based his on not apologizing for being an actor. Neither characteristic necessarily qualifies a man to play the lead in an action movie. But when the bullets are flying, the pyrotechnics are booming, and everyone is ankle-deep in broken glass, the guy who knows how to play charm is bound to look disadvantaged next to the one who knows how to play roles.

For the basic requirement in this line of work is authority: moral certitude, calm omnicompetence in the face of murderous excess and, if you can manage it, a touch of mature irony about the Sisyphean nature of law enforcement and order restoration. Like that other great fantasy form, the evening news, shoot-to-thrill movies require the services of an anchorman, someone who can ground implausible events in an attractive, recognizable reality.

The people who usually play this role -- Clint Eastwood, Charles Bronson, Arnold Schwarzenegger -- seem to have been born to it, and often to very little else. What De Niro proves in Midnight Run is that it is a wonderfully actable part. What Willis proves in Die Hard is that it is not one you can ease through, especially if your preparation runs more to body building than to character building.

Would-be action stars need a sophisticated support system, and De Niro has lucked into a lulu. He plays Jack Walsh, an ex-Chicago cop who is now earning a perilous living in Los Angeles as a bounty hunter, returning bail jumpers to their bondsmen. It looks like an easy $100,000 when he is engaged to pick up Jonathan Mardukas (Charles Grodin) in New York City and return him to Los Angeles before his bail must be forfeited. In comparison with Walsh's usual large, violent and well-armed prey, Mardukas is soft of bulk, mild of manner and armored only by his white collar. He is also smart and something of a moralist: he has not only embezzled large sums from the Mafia but also given most of them to charity. Walsh can live with that -- if only his prisoner could contain himself on the subjects of smoking, drinking, eating fried foods and getting in touch with one's feelings.

What we have here is The Odd Couple on the Lam, with Mardukas trying to slip out of Walsh's clutches and the bounty hunter trying to evade the intricate triple pursuit that Screenwriter George Gallo has structured and Director Martin Brest has smartly executed. The FBI, led by burly, surly Alonzo Mosely (Yaphet Kotto), wants the accountant to testify against his former employers. The gangsters want him dead before that happens. And Marvin Dorfler (John Ashton), a rival bounty hunter, dull witted and implacable, wants to abduct the abductee and claim the fee for himself.

Like the other players, Grodin gives a nicely calibrated performance as the itch his captor cannot afford to scratch too vigorously. But it is De Niro's work that redeems an inherently improbable plot. He handles guns, quips and tight spots with the requisite elan. He brings something else to the part too: a deftly imagined sense of hard roads traveled before he hit this one, of a past lived, not just alluded to. When you root for him, you root for a man, not a killing machine.

That is basically what John McClane (Willis) becomes in Die Hard, though he too is introduced as a cop out of water. The script, by Jeb Stuart and Steven E. de Souza, has McClane, a New York City detective, going to the Los Angeles office Christmas party of his estranged wife (Bonnie Bedelia) in hopes of a reconciliation. Because the bash is taking place on a high floor of a high- rise, the revelers are easily sealed off from outside aid by an invading terrorist gang. The thugs miss McClane, who is in the john when they strike, so he is free to convert himself into a loose cannon, rolling through the mostly deserted building, eliminating the gang one by one.

In the first half of Director John McTiernan's movie, Willis wears an undershirt. In the second half he gets rid of it. And that's pretty much it for his performance. Of course, an actor is hard pressed to create a characterization when all he has to play against is gunshots and explosions. Any actor deserves sympathy when his love interest is sequestered from him, his nemeses are without human interest, his potential allies are all idiots, and the only sensible figure on the scene (Reginald Veljohnson) is always a walkie-talkie away. Still, Willis' presence is whiny and self-involved, and it is a ludicrous error to have him stop to confess past insensitivities before effecting his wife's climactic rescue. That is not the dramatically opportune moment to go Moonlighting.

Good, bad or indifferent, megabangs are beginning to cost megabucks. Reportedly, each of these films costs well over $30 million, with De Niro and Willis pulling in about $5 million a head. And in a season in which Schwarzenegger's Red Heat and Sylvester Stallone's pricey Rambo III are having trouble reaching profit, scholars of the bottom line are wondering if the action-adventure genre has a future. Possibly not, if people keep putting their money into more noise and bigger flames. But a performance like De Niro's, in a well-made entertainment like Midnight Run, is cheap at any price. And capable of restoring the audience's faith in the form.