Ethan Hawke Ranked

Welcome to "Ranked", a weekly series where I rank a franchise or filmography from worst to best and hand out assorted related superlatives. This week, I'm profiling the work of Ethan Hawke-whose latest project "The Black Phone" arrives in theaters tomorrow. 

Ethan Hawke's Filmography Ranked:

20.Cut Throat City (D-)

19.Dead Poets Society (D)

18.Reality Bites (C+)

17.Juliet, Naked (C+)

16.Brookyln's Finest (C+)

15.The Purge (C+)

14.Daybreakers (B-)

13.Assault on Precinct 13 (B)

12.In a Valley of Violence (B)

11.Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets (B)

10.Predestination (B)

9.First Reformed (B)

8.Sinister (B)

7.Lord of War (B+)

6.The Guilty (B+)

5.The Northman (B+)

4.Before the Devil Knows You're Dead (B+)

3.The Magnificent Seven (A-)

2.Boyhood (A)

1.Training Day (A+)

Top Dog: Training Day (2001)

Antonie Fuqua secured his permanent place in cinema history 21 years ago. After dropping a pair of middling studio action movies (The Replacement Killers, Bait) that weren't exactly the type of works that would help someone build a lengthy career as a Hollywood director, Fuqua helmed one of the most essential crime movies in the history of film. Training Day has served as the blueprint for corrupt cop stories for the past 2 decades and nothing outside of The Departed has been able to match or exceed its intensity, grime and unapologetic brutality. The interplay between Washington's terrifying corrupt narcotics officer Alonzo Harris and Hawke's naive beat cop Jake Hoyt is fucking electrifying, the fearless, mesmerizing performances from Washington and Hawke are the stuff of legend and its criminal underworld has a constant sense of danger running through it that keeps the tension level high in nearly every scene.       

Bottom Feeder: Cut Throat City (2020)

After finding some success with the campy martial arts splatter movie The Man with the Iron Fists, RZA got a little too ambitious with his follow-up directorial effort Cut Throat City. By bafflingly turning a fairly basic heist setup (a group of four desperate friends in Post-Katrina New Orleans decide to rob a casino to try and get out of poverty) into an increasingly convoluted crime saga that picks up new characters/plot threads in nearly every scene, Cut Throat City goes down as a dishearteningly  sloppy and downright incoherent film that is easily among the most maddening movies I've seen in recent years.  

Most Underrated: The Magnificent Seven (2016)

Speaking of Fuqua, The Magnificent Seven is the most slept-on movie in his filmography. The remake of a remake justifies its existence by letting its heroes (Denzel Washington, Chris Pratt, Hawke, Vincent D'onofrio, Byung-hun Lee, Manuel Garcia-Ruflo, Martin Sensmeier) be deeply charismatic badasses and its main villain (Peter Sarsgaard) be an old school moustache-twirling shitbag, delivering terrific action sequences that have some great bits of humor seamlessly weaved into them and packing a whole lot of energy and style into every single frame.   

Most Overrated: Dead Poets Society (1989)

Watching this and Rain Man in such close proximity has really opened my eyes to the shameless tackiness some of these late 80's awards bait dramas possessed. There isn't a sincere emotion, thought or character on display in this whole fucking movie, which becomes especially apparent during its over-the-top contrived final act that features plenty of world class moments of sickeningly deceptive melodrama. On top all of that nauseating crap, it also happens to be every bit as drearily dull as a coming-of-age story set at an elite prep school in 1959 sounds on paper.  

Top Crowning Cinematic Achievement: Boyhood (2014)

Boyhood is a cinematic snapshot where the viewer is invited to observe how a group of characters progress over a 12-year period. Giving people an opportunity to watch a set of characters navigate the many highs and lows life delivers and how those experiences shape individuals over an extended period of time allows for an incredible degree of character development and raw, honest emotions to make it to the screen. Richard Linklater, Ellar Coltrane, Patricia Arquette, Hawke and Lorelei Linklater should feel a tremendous amount of pride for their involvement in making something that beautifully captures what it's like to grow up and be a parent in a world that's far from perfect.        

Reminder of Just How Great an Actor He Is: First Reformed (2018)

Hawke has had such a long, busy career as a prominent character actor that I think a lot of film fans took his talent for granted for a number of years. His performance in First Reformed seems to have finally put a stop to that. Not only did the emotionally complex, intellectually curious character of Pastor Ernes Toller provide him with the chance to really show off his range, but it was the rare opportunity for him to lead a movie and having him be at the center of the story makes the bold, unexpected path this film sets down as it progresses more convincing than it would've been in the hands of a less daring performer.