Harrison Ford names the most pointless movie of his career: “I didn’t have anything to act”
There are good movies, there are bad movies, and then there are nothing movies, which are arguably the worst of all. Harrison Ford has been guilty of making a few, but there’s one that left a particularly bad taste in his mouth.
Even the biggest stars in the business make the occasional misstep, and the Star Wars and Indiana Jones icon has been known to stumble. His legacy as a legendary figure was secured a long time ago, but before he’d become comfortable in his own cinematic skin, he was prone to a calculated risk or two.
The only reason he made Hanover Street was that his filmography had been entirely sexless up to that point, but his desire to play a romantic lead for the first time ever was quickly forgotten when he disavowed the movie completely, refused to promote it, and refused to talk about it altogether.
That was at least a noble and well-intentioned failure, something you can’t say about Cowboys & Aliens, Hollywood Homicide, Paranoia, or The Expendables 3, all of which carry the detectable stench of being roles that Ford only played because the paycheques on offer were too good to turn down.
Of course, a veteran is allowed to top up their bank balance, but in the immediate aftermath of George Lucas’ first Star Wars film decimating box office records, that bank balance wasn’t very healthy. Ford was a household name, but only as Han Solo, and he knew he couldn’t coast by on the residual popularity of a galaxy far, far away forever.
That led him to Force 10 from Navarone, a sequel he summarily dismissed as “a piece of total dogshit.” He wasn’t wrong, and it didn’t take him very long to figure it out, either, after he quickly discovered that the second-billed role of Mike Barnsby was the biggest, fattest, juiciest nothingburger of a character that he’d ever bitten into.
“I was lost, because I didn’t know what the story was about,” he confessed. “I didn’t have anything to act. There was no reason for my character being there. I had no part of the story that was important to tell. I had a hard time taking the stage with the bull that I was supposed to be doing. I can’t do that, and I won’t ever do that again.”
He knew Barnsby was “one of those macho, tough-guy parts that everyone thought I should be doing,” so he did it. Partly to keep himself gainfully employed, and partly “to objectify the success of Star Wars,” which he was sure he had nothing to do with, other than playing Han Solo to the best of his abilities.
There was nothing on the page, and there wasn’t much on the screen, with Force 10 from Navarone bombing at the box office, making 75% less than its predecessor, and quickly being consigned to the history books as the most pointless movie Ford ever made, a label bestowed by the man himself.
