Man Crush #9: Clive Owen

Best Known For:  Children of Men

Let's take a trip down memory lane, shall we?  Well, I'll take a trip down memory lane, and you can likely hear about these memories for the first time.  Either way, let's rewind this yarn back to the summer of 2001, when a young, and very impressionable Travis was at a crossroads in his life.  (Sorry to refer to myself in the third person like that, but I just watched LeBron's 'The Decision' and it seems like all the really cool people talk in the third person like that…)

Travis had just been accepted into a college program (that he didn't really think he would get into) and was starting the summer prep course that was required of all the students that were to take this program.  The course was 'Macintosh Foundations' and it was intended to teach all students the basic usage of Mac computers as that was entirely what would be used during the duration of the Digital Arts and Media program.  The course was pretty much a joke, especially since he had been using Apple computers in some form or another since 1985, but especially so, considering that for one whole session they simply watched a few popular online videos for the entire class.

This was pre-YouTube, and at this point I (sorry, I'm going to have to switch back to using less douchey pronouns) had never had access to my own high speed internet connection, so my exposure to video on the internet had been quite minimal.  The instructor on this particular day had brought in a video called Chosen and it was described to the class as a 'BMW Film'.  Needless to say, eight minutes later and I was completely hooked.  And now, having seen them all more times then I care to admit, I can tell you that of the eight produced films, this was probably the weakest.  And yet still, I was hooked.

I'm a car guy, don't get me wrong, but this series of shorts didn't serve to sell me on these fine BMW automobiles any more than I already was.  No, the major consequence that came from these viewings was the moment that I fired up IMDB.com in my browser and said to myself 'I need to know who the guy is that played the driver, and I need to see every movie he's ever been in…'

That man, of course, was Clive Owen.

Unfortunately, a quick glance at his filmography revealed all obscure British films that I had little-to-no interest in seeing - despite the presence of my newest potential Man Crush.  Then trailers started to show up for Beyond Borders and King Arthur.  I saw the latter out of some newly-formed devotion to Mr. Owen, but quickly regretted the decision.  Even with the seemingly can't-miss combination of Clive Owen and Keira Knightley, it was not a great film.  I began to worry that my boy Clive maybe didn't have the chops to make it work on the big screen, but I kept my eye out for him none-the-less.  Then the Sin City trailer dropped and I truly got excited again at the prospect of Clive goodness.  He followed that up with Children of Men and Inside Man, and by the time the credits rolled on Closer*, he was easily in my Top 3.

I couldn't have been more excited for Shoot 'Em Up (or more disappointed with the end result…) and The International and Duplicity can certainly be classified as 'missteps'.  So, as it stands, he currently sits at Number 9.  Not a terrible spot to be ranked, but without a good movie to his name since 2006, it was hard to keep him in the Top 3.  That said, you might want to check back here after The Killer Elite is released, as it pretty much features my dream cast of Jason Statham, Clive and Yvonne Strahovski.  If it's half as good as I hope, then I may have edited this page to put Clive back in the Top 3... or else the disappointment and shear heartache of this movie not living up to my decidedly over-hyped levels of unachievablity will have forced me to drop him out of the Top 10 altogether.

Proof of Awesomeness:

*Although a flawed movie overall, the scene in Closer when Clive verbally dismantles Julia Roberts after she admits to cheating on him is one of my favourite scenes ever committed to film.  Clive absolutely kills it, and reminds me why he really should still be in the Top 3.  Of course it definitely doesn't hurt that I absolutely loath Julia Roberts…