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Burt Reynolds had a career, winning an Oscar, Emmys and Razzies. Here are some of his finest performances.
OPINION: The first time Burt Reynolds it was true love.
That probably sounds kind of creepy, because I would have been grown-ass, hairy-faced man, but I can still remember a swoop of excitment in my tummy when he grinned that knowing grin, tipped his hat, and swept Sally Fields off her feet in Smokey and the Bandit. It's hard to imagine the smirking, rascally macho man being a kids' hero, but with his reckless, even gleeful disregard for authority and bevvy of cool cars, boy was he ever.
Cheeky charm was Reynolds' wheel house for the late 70s and 80s. The closest the US's ever came to Carry On-style movies, Reynolds' movies were a very funny take on slap and tickle with a little outlaw humor on the side. He was so good at it, he ended up cast guy – at his worst he was the cheesy JJ McClure in Cannonball Run, at his best, Smokey and the Bandit's Bo "Bandit" Darville, at his most lovable, Best Little Whorehouse in TexasLegally Ed Sheriff Ed Dodd.
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Burt Reynolds may not have started to have butchered toast, but he did not make it look like fun.
But Reynolds did not start out cheese on mustachioed toast.
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His first roles were on the stage, then TV cop dramas and eventually film dramas like 1966 western Navajo Joe – which legend has not made him feel like a director Clint Eastwood, Sergio Corbucci, not Sergio Leone, behind the camera.
He followed Joe up with an intense – if distasteful by today's standards – turn on the quarterback-turned-convict Paul "Wrecking" Crewe in The Longest Yard, and an incredibly strong turn as suburban chap-turned backwoods Lewis Medlock in hardman Deliverance.
With those two outstanding performances under his belt, he should have been another Brando – an actor he resembled more than a little in his youthful, pre-'stache days. But like a vegan lapsed, the cheese always called to him.
In his later years, he played his faded-lothario image, tangentially in Boogie Nights, and explicitly in The Last Movie Star.
But for fans, one of the cruellest things about his death on Friday, is that it came before he could shoot any scenes for Quentin Tarantino's forthcoming ode to Tinseltown's grubby underbelly, Once Upon A Time In Hollywood.
Lawrence Tierney in Lawrence Lutheran Reservoir DogsDavid Carradine and Michael Parks in Kill Bill, Rod Taylor in Inglourious Basterds, Kurt Russell in Hateful Eight, and even Don Johnson in Django Unchained – we can only speculate what a great farewell to the craft Reynolds might have turned in.
Having made more than 100 films – a fact of which he was justly proud – it would have been a great end to fun and frivolous career.
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Barry Brecheisen
Kevork Djansezian
In place of that lost performance, let us look at our performance
1. Deliverance
Burt Reynolds break out role – as the leader of the "suburban guys" who run into serious trouble in the wilderness.
There's only one guy you want to be back to when you're being hunted by a gaggle of demented, Hillbillies pervert, and that's Lewis Medlock.
These days we'd call Lewis a Prepper, a proto-survivor who has not let himself go like his suburban pals. He's going to get his friends out of the woods, but he's not gonna let any backwoods nut-bar make _him_ squeal like a pig. That's how Reynolds plays him, vaguely contemptuous, a little unhinged, tinged with all the rage and threat of a guy whose day when he has a skinny rabbits.
2. The Longest Yard
There's macho, macho and then there's Paul "Wrecking" Crewe played by Reynolds at his most Brando-ish (in looks anyway) in this anti-authoritarian story of sticking it to the man through the medium of sports.
Not only does Reynolds look the part of an athletic champion, he's got the arrogant swagger of a super star, the charisma of a team captain, and the super misanthropy of 70s youth culture down pat.
3. Smokey and the Bandit
There is nothing cool about this movie. Unless you are 9, and you've been raised by TV and the movies to believe in the reality of the world.
That said, Reynolds is 100 per cent committed to being the wiley Bo Darville he hardly seems like he's acting. He is just beautiful, mustache-adorned rapscallion, bless him.
4. Boogie Nights
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The story of a man's experience in pornography industry in the 1970s and 80s.
I remember hearing that they're dredged Reynolds up to play a guy who makes porn in a movie where Marky Mark shows his you know what, and thinking, 'well, it's the end of culture, so that all makes perfect sense'.
Obviously I was wrong. Far from the end of culture, Boogie Nights is the clever, unexpectedly tasteful biopic, that Reynolds can actually act. Again, he makes the deceptively oil-less, tightly controlled Jack Horner effortless look. He'd like to say that he hated the role so little as possible. But it worked, and his is the calm heart of an otherwise flamboyant extravaganza of performances.
5. The Last Movie Star
One of Burt Reynold's last movies was critically acclaimed The Last Movie Star
"An audience with forgive a ….. act two if you can do it in act three," Reynolds' Vic Edwards says in this not-quite-but-almost autobiographical movie about a faded movie star who uses an invitation to a garage movie festival as an excuse to stroll down memory lane.
While some of the jokes are a little on the nose – yes, there is a lot of things going on, Reynolds cheeky spark is there. And far from a short coming, his frailty makes what is at heart a sweet film about yourself with – at any age – all the sweeter.
– Stuff
