Top Tube Picks: Lawmen Who Are Justified

Share on Facebook posted 03-07-11 by Max Tedaldi

In a recent post I bitched and whined about shows that I had watched and loved, only to see them prematurely canceled. One show on the list did a particularly fine job of melting any faith I had in quality shows not being canceled. Deadwood was down and dirty. It showed the Frontier West as the kind of place that you always expected it was. No one was clean, everyone was dying from a disease that we’ve currently all but eradicated (consumption?), and every man worth his salt was happy on the trigger and went to sleep each night with a prostitute wrapped in his arms. Fine, this might be an exaggeration, but Deadwood did take the “cowboy” and the “lawman” and removed all of the romance and fantasy, and in the process made the show as gritty and disgusting as it could have been. And it was awesome.

So you can imagine my delight when FX debutedJustified last year. Timothy Olyphant definitely deserved another show, especially one where he could play a lawman with pure ice running through his veins. Olyphant’s character Raylan Givens on Justified has a lot in common with his Deadwood character Seth Bullock. Both are lawmen, both are new to a town that desperately needs law and order, and both men can stare down their rivals with a zero-degree glare that would make the burliest of men cower like a puppy who just pissed on the carpet.

I don’t know if Justified will be able to maintain the awesome pace that it set in the first season But, Justified has all of the makings of a 30ninjas all-star: cowboys, crazy evil villains, explosions, and memorable quotes, “You do know we’re not allowed to shoot people on sight anymore – and haven’t been, for I don’t know, 100 years?”. Yes, Timothy Olyphant has made somewhat of a habit of playing lawmen so icy cold you have to measure them in Kelvin, but their have been others. There have been lawmen in film so cool that Kool-Aid gets jealous, purveyors of law and justice so icy that they’ve got frostbite on their souls. Here’s the start of the list, feel free to add on some more in the comment section!

Robocop Officer Alex J. Murphy

Screenwriter Edward Neumeier got the idea for Robocop while walking by a poster of Bladerunner. A friend asked him to describe the movie and he said, “it’s about a cop hunting robots”, he quickly interpreted the phrase a different way and wrote the Robocop script.

After being pronounced dead police officer Alexander James Murphy is taken into the “Robocop” program and is transformed into the first Robocop. Murphy is essentially a robot who maintains glimpses of Murphy’s former memory. His directives are:
1. Serve the public trust
2. Protect the innocent
3. Uphold the law
4.

It’s no surprise that a robot finds its way onto a list of icy cold lawmen. Devoid of emotion and possessing a body that is resilient to pretty much all forms of assault makes Robocop the perfect body to place in harm’s way. It also doesn’t hurt that he has an Auto-9, a Cobra Assault Cannon, a Machine gun/rocket launcher, a Flightpack/recharging station, and a Mini-gun/cannon.

Dirty Harry Police Inspector Harry Callahan

The policeman icon, Dirty Harry is the lawman who is too much of a man to operate within the confines of the law, which may explain why he also finds himself on our list of top vigilantes in film. Dirty Harry Callahan is the cop who will do whatever it takes to save the innocent, even if that means injury to himself (not likely), injury to his partner (likely), or some random other collateral damage (probable). This can sometimes get in his way, like when the District Attorney releases his suspect because Harry broke into his house and tortured a confession out of him (oops?!). Reduced to simplest terms, if 24‘s Jack Bauer had a father it would be Harry Callahan.

Die Hard Officer John Mclane

In a 1980′s action flick world Officer John Mclane broke the mold on what the film cop was. He didn’t have a shaved chest, oiled up muscles, and perfect hair. He struggled to best his adversaries and only did so through clever last minute thinking. He cracked jokes, and was effortlessly cool without even trying. He also had some of the best one liners in action movie history: Yippee-ki-yay, motherfucker.

Terminator 2 T-1000

The best part about Terminator 2 was that it took the convention of the cop fighting for order and justice and flipped it on its ass. The T-1000′s mimetic metal alloy composition allows it to take on any shape or mimic any voice, but the form it uses for most of the movie is that of a Los Angeles police officer. The T-1000 was ranked #39 in the Online Film Critics Society’s “Top 100 Villians of All Time” in 2002, and for good reason. I was afraid of police for years after watching T-2 as an unsuspecting 7-year-old, and I was convinced that all policemen could and would morph their arms into razorblades, and run at the speed of highway traffic. The T-1000 had no nerves to speak of because he was a robot, a liquid metal robot, and he wanted to kill you. OK, fine he wanted to kill John Connor but you get my point.

Training Day Alonzo

Alonzo in Training Day is the perfect contrast to the rookie cop, Jake Hoyt, he is evaluating. Alonzo is a crooked cop. He is a really crooked cop. Alonzo does things as a lawman that you could only do if you had balls made of adamantium. He forces Jake to take a hit off a PCP-laced joint. He employs a brand of laissez-faire street justice on a woman getting attacked in an alley. He produces a fake search warrant and steals a stash of drug money from a drug distributor, and later steals more money from a drug dealer to pay off the Russian mob. He’s corrupt and street-wise, he’s got a super dope wife (Eva Mendes), and the iciness to stare at gangsters in the face and boss them around.