He’s been acting in small television roles since at least the mid-1990s, and now he’s brewing into one of the hottest commodities in Hollywood.
But is Jeremy Renner on the road to becoming Tinseltown’s next action star?
Honestly, I’m not exactly sure.
Renner scored an Oscar nomination and the eye of producers everywhere for his role in The Hurt Locker. He deserved the praise, he was excellent in an excellent film.
He was equally as strong in The Town, and pulled off the tough guy role with The Unusuals, a clever if short-lived ABC series.
Now rumors have been abound on the Internet that Renner is in line to score the role of Snake Plissken in the questionable remake of Escape from New York (I say questionable because, well, the original was awesome and Kurt Russell iconic in that part, why remake it? Just make a frickin’ sequel with Russell in the role as an older Plissken, why is this such a hard idea to consider?!).
Wow, sorry, went off on a tangent there.
Anyway, according to The Wrap, all the talk of Renner being up for the role is bunk. Shock, an Internet report about an actor getting a role in a movie might not be true!
But let’s say Renner does score that role. He’s already got a role in The Avengers as the arrow-shootin’ superhero Hawkeye. He’s got that lined up after his turn in the latest Mission: Impossible flick.
Should he grab the role, he would be cementing himself as the latest action hero of Hollywood. And to be honest, Hollywood is sorely lacking in this department. There is no clear-cut man of action on the big screen anymore.
The 1980s had Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger, the 1990s had Bruce Willis and Arnold still. And while Willis is still pretty much kicking ass today (Redwas great), he’s not exactly that guy anymore.
There has yet to be an actor who’s really stepped into that slot. Maybe Jason Statham, but that’s about it, and I’m not sure he quite fits the bill. His films haven’t reached the stature of Willis’ Die Hard films, or any of Arnold’s classics.
So, could Renner be that guy?
I’m not really sure he’d want to fill that slot. Of the three films he’s got coming, one of them is the latest Paul Thomas Anderson epic. And judging from his past projects and roles, which have more often than not been small parts, he’s not a two-dimentional kind of performer.
I guess I just don’t see him going for roles that are so simplistic, maybe its just me. And without a doubt, a Snake Plissken kind of part is anything but complex. He’d probably have to be milked heavily to take the part.
And The Hurt Locker wasn’t an action film, it was a drama, and a very good one at that.
I think when the remake for Escape from New York materializes, and let’s face it, they’ll waste their time doing it, it will NOT be featuring Renner in the starring role.