Buffed, bold & bad: Hollywood's Black action heroes

Jet, July 29, 2002

They're super bad, Black and bold with a capital "B." They're a group of Black action heroes who range from buffed and brooding to sleek and sexy.

They may not be household names like Batman, Spiderman or James Bond, but action fans across the country as well as Hollywood's powers-that-be have taken notice that sexy Black men with washboard abs can swing from perilous ropes, do daring somersaults, kickbox like Bruce Lee and save many a distressed damsel. And they're pulling in huge audiences, which delights Hollywood more than anything.

Wesley Snipes heated up the box-offices across the country as America's coolest vampire slayer in Blade in 1998 and again earlier this year in Blade II. As Eric, the half-man, half-vampire, the taut Snipes is quick with his martial arts-style kicks and can swashbuckle and handle guns with the best of them as he goes about the business of avenging his mother's death and attempting to rid the planet of the vicious blood suckers.

"Blade's one of a kind," Snipes said. "He has all the strength of vampires but none of their weaknesses. His world is filled with the vampires he hates and his quest in life and purpose for living is to rid the world of them, wherever he can find them."

Snipes, to no one's surprise, is a practitioner of martial arts, has a fifth-degree black belt and does many of his own movie stunts. Even though he's in excellent physical shape, Snipes (who produced Blade II) still underwent extensive training for the demanding role.

Like Snipes, Vin Diesel already had a near perfect body when he began showing those muscles and flexing those arms in The Fast and the Furious. He wowed fans of that blockbuster film with his acting skills, masculinity and gentility.

Later this summer he is sure to turn even more heads in the much-anticipated XXX. In that action thriller he has the title role. He's tattooed and more buffed than ever, and engages in death-defying thrilling acts like parachuting out of a car as it plunges hundreds of feet off a bridge, just for the adrenaline rush.

In the film, Xander (Diesel's character), is forced to cooperate with the U.S. government to infiltrate an underground Russian crime ring and manage to somehow stay out of jail. The government knows that this fearless thrill-seeker has a better chance of succeeding where others have failed. He goes into the superdangerous mission with little more than his brains, natural athleticism and, above all, attitude to spare.

"The idea of giving birth to a new breed of secret agent was interesting and challenging," Diesel said. "What attracts me to a project first is the content, and with XXXI was attracted to the content of a guy who is solely concerned with his own thrill-seeking endeavors, someone who's not concerned with political affairs outside of the ones that could directly affect him. I like the idea that someone like Xander could be called upon to step into the shoes of professional secret agents. Taking a guy who's the least likely to want to save the world, and having him do just that, fascinates me."

The Rock, who stands 6-foot-4 and weighs 270 pounds, took a slightly more unorthodox route to superstardom. He ruled the wrestling ring before reigning over two of Hollywood's biggest hits of recent years, The Mummy Returns and The Scorpion King. His real name is Dwayne Johnson and his presence in The Mummy Returns for just 20 minutes so impressed the producers that megamillions were thrown his way to star in Scorpion King. The former University of Miami football player with his awesome physical presence seems tailor-made for action adventures.

In Scorpion King, a movie that takes place 5,000 years ago, he played a massive warrior enlisted to help tribes fight off a ruthless warlord named Memnon (Steve Brand).

"My long-term goal has always been to break into the film industry, and I was waiting for the right opportunity," Johnson said. "It felt like this was definitely it. It was a phenomenal chance for Universal to take and I wasn't about to let them down."

He admits that his athletic background made the transition to fighting onscreen" a little easier."

Sure Blade, Scorpion King and XXX are supersexy action heroes, but Spawn, released in 1997, was the first Black comic book superhero to headline a blockbuster movie.

Michael Jai White, in his first starring role, played Al Simmons, a government agent who, after being incinerated by his corrupt boss Jason Wynn (Martin Sheen), makes a posthumous pact with Lucifer. He desperately wants to see his wife, so Simmons (by now called Spawn) agrees to lead the campaign of Hell's Army to destroy the human race.

However, the forces of good and evil are tugging at Spawn, and ultimately, good prevails. He broke his pact with the Devil and used his special powers to try to save the world. "This character is dealing with a multitude of adversity," White told JET. "Just dramatically, there are not many roles that even touch it as far as structure. I hadn't read any character that was as dramatically potent as this."