Still
walking tall:
A tribute to actor Bo Svenson.
They say that you'll never become a prophet in
your own country. Actor Bo Svenson has not only by Swedish critics often
been dismissed as just big and wooden. A poor man's Chuck Connors. One
critic once joked that Svenson didn't go to USA by option, Swedish film-lovers
forced him to emigrate. Well, wooden or not, Bo Svenson (born in Gothenburg
in 1941) has nonetheless made himself a remarkably wide career in movies
and beyond. Fuck Peter Stormare. Svenson's the deal.
I remember when Bo Svenson was guest at a Swedish talkshow on TV some thirteen years ago, I think he'd just finished Heartbreak Ridge, and the host had made a huge card listing of all Svenson's movie and TV appearences and the list was, well, seemingly endless. That amazed me quite a bit, since up to that point he had just been another cool macho actor, albeit born in my country. But in that very moment it also struck me how incredibly wide and varied his career had been. Actress Maud Adams was in the same show, but her filmography wasn't as impressive (Octopussy and then what?). Svenson, however, has had an amazing career, not only in movies. His pre-movie life is just as impressive, not to forget peculiar. When he first arrived in America during the late '50s he worked as a farmer, disher, hockey player, racecar driver and a ballet dancer (!) before joining the U.S Marines, stationed in Japan for six years. As if that wasn't enough, he began working as a smuggler of humans in Cuba. Only then did he decide to stick to movies. Yep, he has done it all. And he has played it all on screen as well. The master swordsman (Wizard of the Lost Kingdom), the nutty professor (Primal Rage) and the fallen football star (North Dallas Forty). He's been searching for abominable snowmen (Snowbeast) and big-breasted women (Gold of the Amazon Women) and he has acted against Clint Eastwood (Heartbreak Ridge), Nick Nolte (North Dallas Forty), Chuck Norris (Delta Force) as well as Sonny Chiba (Virus) and Lance Henriksen (Choke Canyon). And that's not counting his over 300 hours of television work and guest appearences in shows such as Mission Impossible, Murder She Wrote, Magnum P.I, High Chaparral and JAG. Sure, he's done too much worthless crap for his own good. So much that the public and critics alike often tend to forget that he actually got some mainstream critical acclaim down the way, especially for his portrait of fallen basketball player Jack Twyman in Big Mo and as the crazy pilot Karl-Axel in the Robert Redford vehicle The Great Waldo Pepper. Hey, even his sympathetic portrait of the monster in Glenn Jordan's Frankenstein remake got him a few applauds.
But although Bo Svenson has done it all he will, when the books of film history is being written, be forever remembered by many as that tall blond who used to kick lawless rednecks with his baseball bat in the Walking Tall movies. The real-life redneck sheriff Buford Pusser, who was played in the first film by Joe Don Baker and replaced by Svenson for the second. He has played the no-nonsense redneck sheriff Buford countless times during the years. There's the three Walking Tall movies of course (beginning in 1975 with the most recent as late as in 1991) and one more recent attempt at transfering the character to television with the Walking Tall series. Further on he has more or less reprised his teeth-kicking character in two Thunder movies, a couple of horror potboilers (Butcher Baker Nightmare Maker, Curse II) and various television series (Hunter etc). However, the rumored participation in the comedy Buford's Beach Bunnies proved to be greatly exaggerated.
In 1997, just after he had declared his retirement from movies, Svenson steamed some headlines in his home country as it became known that he had landed a part in the long-awaited Speed sequel which was to star Sandra Bullock, Willem Dafoe and a zillion dollar budget. Had the critics underrated the star-quality of Bo Svenson? Had he gone superstar at last? Well, his part was not that big. Actually it's rather small and he had not even any scene against the film's star Bullock. To be really honest, it's rather pathetic to even make any fuzz about it. He plays Captain Pallard in charge of a huge Norweigan luxury yacht and he gets thrown off the ship by Willem Dafoe even before the main action has began. If only Svenson had a baseball bat, then that sorry Dafoe would have learned a trick or two. But it doesn't matter. Speed 2 shipwrecked careers and it's now a common opinion from all involved that film should never have been made. Svenson kept rolling however, claiming to be forever thankful for the experince and for the fat paycheck if nothing else. He also earned good reviews for his performance in the love-story Solitude Point, a Japanese production. Most recently he has been putting on the role of producer, director and writer for the ambitious war-epic Sisu-A Spirit Rebellious, a pet- project based on a novel written by himself about the Russian/Finnish winter-war. He also directed Outlaw, starring himself and Michael Madsen among others.
© The Inzomniac's Movie Madness Review.