Photo: Blade Runner
Rutger Hauer in 'Blade Runner'
Rutger Hauer in 'Blade Runner'
With all due respect to Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas of the title roles in the rollicking 1986 film Tough Guys, to me, the late Rutger Hauer best personifies that term. The legendary Humphrey Bogart and the menacing Jack Palance are the only other actors whose movie work comes close.
Indeed, of all the tough-guy villains I’ve seen as a lifetime cineast, the hulking Hauer takes the cake. He was the nastiest, scorching the screen in more than 100 feature films and some 40 television movies before his death at 75, in 2019. And he never failed to disappoint.
From his stunning, star-making turn as a World War II patriot in the Dutch Soldier of Orange (1977); cold-blooded terrorist in Nighthawks (1981); mind-boggling deadly android in Blade Runner (1982); truly scary serial killer in The Hitcher (1986); sadistic trapper in Arctic Blue (1993), and Russian prison camp prisoner in Escape From Sobibor (1987), Hauer’s cinematic magnetism cast a spell on movie audiences. You couldn’t take your eyes off him.
To me, the only actor whose screen presence approached Hauer’s was the late Steve McQueen, whom Hauer channeled in a 1987 sequel to McQueen’s 1950s TV series, “Wanted: Dead or Alive.”
Hauer made his early mark in many European films, notably The Wilby Conspiracy (1975) with Sidney Poitier and Soldier of Orange with Jeroen Krabbe and Edward Fox. He also portrayed a captured Jewish Russian army officer in a searing TV movie Escape From Sobibor—an infamous Nazi death camp. In it, he helps lead a memorable mass break-out, with co-stars Alan Arkin and Joanna Pacula.
Icy Terrorist
Hauer’s first major American vehicle was Nighthawks with Sylvester Stallone, Billy Dee Williams, Persis Khambatta, Nigel Davenport and Lindsay Wagner. As Wolfgar, an icy terrorist, Hauer hijacks New York’s picturesque Roosevelt Island tram and plans to kill high-level international luminaries on board. At the end, he pays with his life—gunned down by Stallone in drag.
In The Hitcher, Hauer was at his scariest as fiendish killer-hitchhiker, John Ryder. He scares the hell out of a young man (C. Thomas Howell) who innocently picks him up only to see him murder many people—including cops. Once caught, he escapes by wiping out an entire rural police station. In the end—after killing a young woman (Jennifer Jason Leigh) in ghastly fashion—Howell viciously guns him down on the road.
Hauer’s strangest was his highly touted turn as Roy Batty, the diabolical replicant in Blade Runner. With Harrison Ford and Daryl Hannah, it was a shattering look at the future. Based on Philip K. Dick’s novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, it ranks as the best-ever sci-fi film. As usual, Hauer was unforgettable.
Despite favoring big-screen movies over the made-for-television variety, Hauer’s work in three of the latter—Inside the Third Reich (1982); Fatherland (1994), and Blind Side (1993), were clear exceptions to my rule. He played a high-level pro-Nazi in one, a post-World War II anti-Nazi in the second and a scheming opportunist in the third.
Inside the Reich
Inside the Third Reich— a sobering TV mini-series with an all-star cast—featured Hauer as Adolf Hitler’s architect, Albert Speer. After falling under the Fuehrer’s evil spell, he designed buildings, orchestrated torchlight rallies and planned the infamous 1934 Nuremburg rally detailed in Leni Riefenstahl’s ground-breaking propaganda film Triumph of the Will. In a nuanced performance, Rutger’s pro-Nazi Speer, as Minister of Armaments, finally turned on the diabolical Hitler. Co-stars included Stephen Collins, Blythe Danner, John Gielgud, Ian Holm, Trevor Howard, Derek Jacobi, Viveca Lindfors, Randy Quaid, Mort Sahl, Maria Schell, Elke Sommer and Robert Vaughn.
Fatherland was set in Germany in 1964, as Hitler—who survived the war—sought to meet in Berlin with American President Joseph P. Kennedy Sr. Aided by a female American journalist (Miranda Richardson), Hauer, a wartime U-Boat commander now with the infamous SS, discovered the horrors of the Holocaust. Hauer’s boss (Peter Vaughn) urged him to exercise caution, while fading actress (Jean Marsh) bragged about killing Jews. In a spellbinding ending, Hauer and Richardson alerted an unsuspecting Kennedy, who abruptly canceled his Hitler meeting. Hauer was killed by Nazis after his Hitler Youth son turned him in.
Finally, Blind Side was my fave Hauer bad guy. At his nastiest as a smarmy, violent vagabond, he blackmailed a young couple (Ron Silver and Rebecca De Mornay) after seeing them run down a Mexican policeman in their car south of the border. Intimidating them to hire him as a salesman for their furniture business, he sexually assaults a saleswoman and goes after De Mornay. She resists, calls his bluff and sends him to a fiery, electrifying death.
That was Rutger Hauer, one of many European film stars who made it big in America. To me, he’s right up there with the best. And for my money, the toughest and most memorable.
