TOP TEN HARRISON FORD CHARACTERS

*Originally Posted April 14, 2008*

10. BOB FALFA - American Graffiti

This is what rocks about Falfa. Throughout the movie, we keep hearing about some guy named Bob Falfa who wants to race the fastest guy in town, John Milner. So when Harrison Ford shows up (looking at least 15-20 years older than the other teens he's harassing), it's fucking hilarious. He rides around with a different chick in each scene he's in, AND wears a big white cowboy hat. Eventually, Ron Howard’s girl rides with him at the end for the big race. Falfa crashes his car, loses, and Ron Howard gets his dame back. In the awful sequel, More American Graffiti, Ford returns as Bob Falfa in a small cameo. He’s now the local sheriff.

9. PRESIDENT JAMES MARSHALL - Air Force One

Any actor can play the President of the United States.Big names like Michael Douglas, Morgan Freeman, James Cromwell, even Bill Pullman. But you go to Harrison Ford when you need a US President who can kick major terrorist ass and look good while doing it (or you go to George W. Oooooh, I’m gonna get slammed for that one.) James Marshall rules for a number of reasons. For one, he has a no nonsense, zero tolerance stance on terrorism. Two, he likes to watch college football (even if it’s those pussies from Univ. of Michigan*). Three, he wipes out a whole TEAM of TERRORISTS!Ford’s performance brought nothing entirely new to the table; yea, he cried on cue and took a couple tough shots from Gary Oldman, but it’s the same vunerable hero that he’s made famous. I guess you can say that’s one huge compliment. When standard Harrison Ford acting beats the pants off of any imitators, you know just how good he is.

*yes, I go to Penn State.so fuck you, Michigan!

8. JACK RYAN - Patriot Games/Clear and Present Danger

Taking the reins from the previous Ryan, Alec Baldwin, Harrison Ford delivers in every way. Yea, you care about the cool wife and the stupid daughter because it’s Jack Ryan’s family, but you were also secretly wishing for them to get ambushed and bloodied because that would mean Jack Ryan turns into Harrison-Ford-Ass-Kicker mode. And of course we aren’t disappointed by it. Sean Bean’s merciless, vengeance driven villain was the perfect foil for Ryan, resulting in a great showdown on Ryan’s home turf. In any movie, the greatness of a hero is directly related to the evilness/coolness of the villain. In this movie, Bean’s radical IRA bad guy completely elevates Jack Ryan. In other movies (see: The Fugitive) the main bad guy is a pussy and it slightly takes away from the potential of the hero.In Clear and Present Danger, you have not one, but TWO ultimately cool baddies – Joaquim de Almeida’s Felix Cortez and Miguel Sandoval’s Ernesto Escobedo. Jack Ryan is pretty much the same in this, except you see less of his family and more of his political dealings.Ritter (aka Kittridge from Mission: Impossible) comes in with his usual dominance, and his deleting/printing duel with Ryan is as funny as it is childish.“You’re going to jail!”“You’re such a boy scout!” Sadly, Ben Affleck couldn’t match Ford’s action gravitas on screen in the forgettable follow up.

7. JOHN BOOK - Witness

Hmmm, this one is a bit of a challenge. On the one hand, this movie rocks and John Book kicks all kinds of ass as one of those fake-Amish types. On the other hand, I’ve had the distinct displeasure of having to drive through Lancaster, PA on a number of occasions. You don’t taste road rage until you’re stuck in 95 degree heat behind a long line of cars going at a snail’s pace because the damn Amish horse-and-buggy won’t move over to the side to let everyone pass them. Oh and it wouldn’t be so terrible except the A/C is broken and when I roll down the window it smells like nine piles of fresh sunbaked horseshit because they don’t feel the need to clean up after their rides! COME ON people, it’s just common decency.Anyway, John Book kicks ass because he lets kids handle guns, he kills bad guys with an avalanche of harvested corn (or grain), and he’s not afraid to spy on women naked. Also, the scene where he knocks the blocks off of the street toughs reminds you that it’s not John Book punching like Indiana Jones (the ultimate puncher) in this, it’s that Indy punches like H. Ford…or at least he wishes. Harrison’s performance was so good that it got nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor. The award that year eventually went to William Hurt for Kiss of the Spider Woman.Yea, I never heard of it before either.

6. RICK DECKARD - Blade Runner

Rick Deckard brought a cool detective noir vibe to this classic, like a futuristic Humphrey Bogart except with more brawn. Deckard was a special policeman assigned to hunt down and terminate replicants. His moral ambiguity resignated with a lot of the audience members, not only because he hunts down replicants while falling into a romantic entanglements with one, but some say Deckard himself was a replicant. Some people loved this movie, others loathed it. It remains a cult classic today, with the “he is/isn’t a replicant” debate still raging on. For the record, Ridley Scott said in an interview that he is. Ford takes issue with it, saying they both agreed he wasn’t one. Ford’s best contribution? He gave a terrible voice over narration on purpose because he thought the device was hokey and wanted it cut from the final version. If the final version was the original theatrical release back in ’82, then he failed. If the final version was the 56^th Director’s Cut Edition on DVD, then he totally succeeded. Oh, and how about the awful Sean Young back when she was considered an actress rather than a punchline?Yea, necking with that psycho takes points away from this character.

5. QUINN HARRIS - Six Days, Seven Nights

After years of watching Harrison play the noble hero, this was the kick in the pants we needed.Quinn shows up as a befuddled pilot hauling Anne Heche and her fiancée to a tropical island for their post engagement getaway. The next time we see him, he’s transformed into a grizzled, drunken womanizer trying to hit on Anne Heche (eww) at a bar while Ross Gellar (hahaha) was doing something else. His inebriated wisdom slays me and he only gets funnier from there.True enough, the movie suffers because Anne Heche blows. However, just like saving stranded climbers in reality and gay moisture farmers in Star Wars, Harrison saves this film from sucking too much to watch until end credits. Before long, he retreats back into hero form, rescuing the damsel while defeating the bad guys. Of course I’d prefer if he dumped her and stayed with the exotic dancer, Angelica.She was a hot piece and never minded answering the door naked. And really, when fucking Anne Heche is your competition, how can’t you win?

4. RICHARD KIMBLE - The Fugitive

Fresh off of the success of Patriot Games, Ford came back with another heroic role. Playing a surgeon accused of murdering his wife, he rocks one of the best beards in cinema until having to shave it off to hide from T.L.J, Joey Pants, and Dr. Artz.Harrison’s on the run for most of the movie, which is perfect because he has such a distinct running style (my mom says he looks like he’s got two buckets of water attached to his hips and he’s trying not to spill any of it). Kimble does things in the movie that are laughable if Harrison isn’t playing that role. Can you imagine Kevin Costner jumping off of that dam and surviving? Of course not, he would fall hard, fast, and die on impact (just like his career of late). A common civilian, albeit with surgeon smarts, outwitting the collective forces of State Police and United States Marshalls time and time again? Yea right. Remember, they tried this exact same movie again except with Wesley Snipes and it was TOTAL SHIT. It only works with the big guy out front, which is why Kimble remains so cool.Extra points for having a laugh with Tommy Lee Jones at the end. Minus points for the main bad guy being a pussy (although his accent was cool, and the acting was good, in the end he’s still a medical big wig running a tissue sample scam).

3. ALLIE FOX - Mosquito Coast

This one might boggle you a little bit, probably because most people have never even seen this movie. Allie Fox is an inventor, an absolute genius of all things mechanical; kind of a mad scientist for the 80’s. He grew sick and tired of the state of the world and wanted nothing more than to whisk himself and his family away to some tropical paradise where they could make their own living. So that’s what he did, though it wasn’t really a tropical paradise. More like an insect infested, disease harvesting hole (I’m assuming) in the middle of the South American jungle. Throw in an annoying Christian missionary who butts in on everything, and you have a location that’s pretty much the exact opposite of paradise. But Allie didn’t have to let things stay this way.He went in with the discipline and the know-how to improve their way of life, and delivered on his promise to make things better. He built multi-story homes, fish-farms, laundry pulleys, etc. Hell, he even built a big heat compressor and gave everyone air conditioning, cold water, and ICE (which IS civilization you know). Of course things go south after that, and he goes a bit mental, dragging his family every step of the way (you’ll have to see that for yourself). Harrison lists this role as his most favorite performance, and it’s easy to see why. He’s condescending, a bit meddlesome with a few screws loose, eccentric (most geniuses are), and hilarious. It’s the antithesis of Indy, proving Harrison’s range as an actor when everyone just wanted him to be the hero for the rest of his career.

2. HAN SOLO - The Star Wars Trilogy

The swashbuckling space pirate that vaulted H. Ford to superstardom, Han Solo is who we all want to be. Unbeatable, good looking, carries a gun everywhere, kills people sometimes, bangs Leia other times, it all works. Harrison got this gig while doing some carpentry work for George Lucas while the Star Wars auditions were going on. Since no one was there to read for Han Solo while screen-testing the potential Lukes and Leias, Ford stepped in and was getting so annoyed by the process of it all he started to inject some his mounting frustration and sarcasm into Solo. The result? A wisecracking smuggler with an attitude and the rest is history. Maybe the first guy to actually pull off the “I know” response to a girlfriend’s “I love you” and not get kicked in the balls or slapped in the face. Anyone who doesn’t think Han Solo was the coolest part of the original trilogy is obviously a dick. Han Solo was the heart and soul of Empire Strikes Back, anchoring the film in ways Mark Hamill could only dream of. For me, the most emotional part of Empire wasn’t when Vader, a black machine, told Luke, a normal, slightly wimpy looking human that he’s his father; it’s when Solo gets lowered into the pit and encased in carbonite, only to be taken away by that fag Boba Fett!Now that’s a revelation. And why does anybody care that he shot Greedo first in the original edition? OF COURSE you shoot first. When some ugly green bug is sitting in front of you saying he’s gonna turn you in for money to buy cheap booze and bug sluts, you always shoot first. It’s not like he shot a girl or a kid. It was a green bug, get over it.

1. INDIANA JONES - The Indiana Jones Quadrilogy

When all is said and done, Harrison Ford will be remembered most as the whip-cracking, fedora-wearing, part-time teaching archeologist who gets young chicks on the side while finding supernaturally-flavored artifacts. What catapults Indy above Han Solo is the constant ass kicking he takes. Indy is not some invulnerable superhero, who goes into every situation with a smirk and a one-liner, defeating the enemy with some bravado tactics made up on the fly.Actually, he does sound a little bit like that, but where Han Solo almost effortlessly rose above a situation, Indy is barely scraping himself out with hat in hand (or on head). He’s bitten off more than he can chew in most cases, and that’s what makes him so appealing for everyone.And lets not forget Marion, Willie Scott, and Elsa the Nazi. All hot! Princess Leia…eh, maybe was hot in Empire and that one scene in Jedi. The point is Indy gets more chicks (hotter, too) than Solo, so there’s another edge right there.Would anyone even think archeology is cool if it wasn’t for Indiana Jones? Definitely not. In the snap of the whip or melting of the face, Indy put it on the map. In the end, he’s equal parts tough guy, academic, and romantic, and when some strange Egyptian pops out from nowhere with a sword that could split a rhino in half, he just shoots the fucker and calls it a day. Thank God Tom Selleck didn’t get this role.