The actor who became the “patron saint of all washed-up former stars”, according to Quentin Tarantino
No actor or filmmaker wants to become a washed-up shadow of their former self, which is exactly why Quentin Tarantino seems so determined to bow out with his head held high and gracefully retire from directing movies after his tenth feature.
The two-time Academy Award winner is terrified at the prospect of becoming an “old-man” auteur who overstays his welcome, even if the likes of Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, and Ridley Scott are still going strong in their 70s and 80s, although Brian De Palma, Oliver Stone, and David Cronenberg are balancing the scales somewhat.
There’s no age limit on making a great film, just like there’s no age limit on making a bad one. Stardom is arguably even more fleeting for actors, with countless former A-listers suffering a gradual slide down the hierarchy that’s left them on the outside looking in, yearning for the glory days when they were a big deal.
Sure, some of Hollywood’s biggest names have been in that rarefied air for decades, but for every Tom Cruise, Tom Hanks, Denzel Washington, Harrison Ford or Julia Roberts that’s spent at least 35 years at the top of the tree, there’s a Burt Reynolds, Kevin Costner, Charlie Sheen, or Nicolas Cage who found it more fleeting.
It’s a label nobody wants to earn, but sometimes, it can’t be avoided. However, if there was one actor who deserves to be called the patron saint of the once-mighty thespians who fell from grace, Tarantino knows exactly who he’d deify. It’s hagiography of the harshest degree, with the Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs maestro using his review of Dynamite Brothers to state his case.
The 1974 hybrid of kung fu movie and blaxploitation sounds like exactly the kind of picture Tarantino would love, and unsurprisingly, he does. Timothy Brown and Alan Chang headline the cast as a martial arts expert and street fighter who team up to thwart an organised crime syndicate from wreaking havoc on the streets, with a supporting villain earning Tarantino’s undying adulation.
“Aldo Ray, the patron saint of all washed-up former stars, gives his last no-apology good Aldo Ray performance,” he wrote for his New Beverly Cinema. “This is the type of ’70s skid row production he specialised in during this time. Nevertheless, you can tell Ray realised this was better than most of the dreck that he normally appeared in, and a much bigger role than he was normally trusted with.”
Ray was never a household name, but he was nonetheless a fixture on the silver screen for decades, and a Golden Globe-nominated performer to boot. He’s also one of Tarantino’s all-time favourites, who appeared as a character in his Once Upon a Time in Hollywood novelisation, was the inspiration behind Bruce Willis’ Butch Coolidge in Pulp Fiction, and inspired the moniker of Brad Pitt’s Aldo Raine in Inglourious Basterds.
The whole “patron saint” thing is coming from a place of heavy bias, but Tarantino still appreciates how he “appropriately rose to the occasion” in Dynamite Brothers. Is it a good thing to be called the be-all and end-all that any fading star would hope to aspire to? Probably not, but if somebody has to do it, why not Ray?
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