Stone Cold (1991) and the Tropes Within

Every genre of movies has a language. There’s a certain way that they speak to audiences. That language captures the attention of the people watching. It is why fanbases are built for specific genres. People like horror because of how the atmosphere and fear speak to them. People who like comedy appreciate the funny things that happen within them. Action fans adore the explosions, car chases, and gunplay. There are different nuances to each genre that build the language spoken between the audience and the filmmakers.

Much of the film language involves the tropes that the genres play on. There are certain story beats that occur time and time again throughout each genre. Fans will pick up on the tropes because they speak the same language as the movies they watch. Horror has tropes like cats jumping out of the dark, killers that can walk faster than people can run, and zombies that can only be killed by destroying the brain. Comedies have fart jokes, Gilligan cuts, and look-alikes switching places. Action movies have tropes too, and this week’s movie made a few of them apparent.

Stone Cold told the story of Joe Huff (Brian Bosworth), a police officer on administrative leave. During his time away from the force, he was approached by the FBI to help take down a biker gang. He was known as the best at taking down biker gangs. Huff went undercover as John Stone and got involved with The Brotherhood, a violent biker gang led by a man nicknamed Chains (Lance Henriksen). The gang planned to kill a DA who wanted to sentence one of their arrested members to death for the crimes he committed. Joe Huff, as John Stone, had to stop them.

The language of action movies was spoken throughout Stone Cold. That was most apparent in something that was mentioned in that synopsis. Joe Huff was on administrative leave from the police force. That story beat was a part of many great, as well as not-so-great, action movies. The action hero was removed from the force and went out on their own to fight the villains. In this case, Joe Huff was approached by the FBI after being suspended and worked with them to take down the biker gang. In most action movies with this trope, however, the police officer went rogue and took down the criminals outside the boundaries of the law.

Snake Eater was one of those rogue cop movies. It came out a couple years before Stone Cold. The main character, known as Soldier, was suspended for using excessive force near the beginning of the movie. Soon after, his parents were murdered, and his sister was kidnapped. He went beyond the law and struck out on his own to get revenge. He was a one-man wrecking crew. The bad guys never knew what they were getting themselves into, and by the time they started to figure out what kind of trouble they were in, it was too late. Soldier had them.

Another movie that fit into the rogue cop trope was Street Corner Justice. Once again, there was a police officer who used excessive force while taking down a bad guy. He was put on administrative leave and travelled across the country, from Pennsylvania to Los Angeles, to get away for a bit. In his temporary neighbourhood, he noticed that the gangs were causing a lot of trouble. He didn’t want to get involved. But when his neighbours were hurt while standing up to the gang, he decided to take it into his own hands and fight back. He became the law when the law wouldn’t do anything about the gang. He was off the force but making sure he did the job the force wouldn’t.

Actual police officers weren’t the only subjects of this trope, either. James Bond was a character who went through his fair share of rogue missions. A special agent for MI6, he went rogue in many of his movies. In Die Another Day, MI6 took away his 00 status because they thought he leaked information to the North Koreans when they captured him. He escaped MI6 custody to investigate the leak on his own. He went rogue to find the bad guys. It was the rogue police officer trope in an espionage action movie.

Each of those movies went a little more rogue than Stone Cold. Most of the rogue police officer stuff in Stone Cold was relegated to the opening scene. Three men attempted to rob a grocery store. While they were in the middle of their theft, Joe Huff walked into the store. He went shopping, ignoring what was happening, until the robbers came for him. Then he took them out one by one. The police showed up at the scene and told him that he had been suspended and shouldn’t be fighting the bad guys. He said a one-liner and walked out. After that, he was back on the force, working undercover for the FBI. His time as a rogue officer was short but sweet.

Going off that opening scene, Stone Cold featured the trope of an action prologue. The action prologue was the scene at the beginning that gave a little burst of action to get the audiences hooked. It set up the hero by introducing them though a quick heroic action. In the case of Stone Cold, that was Joe Huff preventing the grocery store robbery. The action prologue didn’t connect with the rest of the movie. It was a self-contained, one-scene bit of action that was simply there to pique interest.

To return to a movie that already came up earlier, Snake Eater featured an action prologue. The only real connection that it had to the rest of the story was that it was where Soldier was suspended from the force. The opening scene involved a drug bust where Soldier seduced a woman in a rundown apartment. When her two colleagues arrived, Soldier set off a series of booby traps that maimed them in various ways. None of it was connected to the people who killed his family, though.

Street Corner Justice also featured an action prologue that led to the police officer being suspended from the force. He chased down a rapist and trapped him on a sort of balcony thing. He started to beat the rapist to a pulp because the rapist tried to shoot him. It was all caught on camera by some people that lived nearby. Because it was caught on camera, he was suspended for excessive force, and went to Los Angeles where the rest of the movie took place. It was connected only in so much as it sent him to where the story would happen.

In the case of the movie Ice, the action prologue was more connected to the overall story. The main character was involved in a diamond heist during the opening scene. In most movies, that would be the end of that story thread. The diamonds might be a part of what happened in the rest of the movie, but that heist surely wouldn’t be. But it was. The guy who they stole the diamonds from was a gangster of sorts who wanted his diamonds back. He would stop at nothing to get them back. The rest of the movie was a struggle between the main character and the gangster. The action prologue was an integral part of that story.

The final piece of action movie trope language that was a part of Stone Cold was the trope of the subordinate who didn’t trust the main character. Chains wasn’t the only horrible person to oversee The Brotherhood. He was the leader, sure, but he had his right-hand men. Ice (William Forsythe) was the main one, and the person who least trusted John Stone. As soon as Joe Huff assumed his undercover persona and infiltrated the gang, Ice was telling everyone that he didn’t trust John Stone. He was right, too. John Stone was there to get rid of them.

The Fast and the Furious featured the same trope. Brian O’Connor was an undercover cop infiltrating a street racing gang to find out who was behind a series of transport truck heists in the area. The leader of the gang was Dom. His right-hand man, Vince, was suspicious the entire time because he thought there was something fishy going on with Brian. He ended up being right by discovering the truth when Brian called in Vince’s injury during a heist gone wrong.

This story beat crossed over into the spoof film, Superfast! The difference in the spoof was that, instead of the trope being built upon the natural suspicion of someone inserting themselves into the group so quickly and out of nowhere, it was built on the jealousy of someone coming between two friends. It was still there. The Vince surrogate was still claiming that there was something suspicious about the way the Brian surrogate was acting. However, it was founded on some completely different feelings. It was no longer a lack of trust. It was the assumed betrayal of a best friend.

Stone Cold was an action movie that spoke to action audiences. It used many of the tropes that have come to play a major role in action movies for decades. The language of action movies was all over it. There was a renegade police officer enforcing the law even though he had been suspended from law enforcement. An action prologue was included to pull the audience in with some fun as soon as the movie started, and it was disconnected from the rest of the story being told. Stone Cold even had one of the bad guys who didn’t trust the new member of their crew. Three different staples of action movies made their way into this one, helping to fill the world with things that people love about action movies.

Tropes have always made movies tick. They provided to audiences. That familiarity kept the audiences’ interest in movies because people were comforted to know and understand what was happening. The familiarity also helped franchise filmmaking flourish. If people liked something, they would want to come back and see it again. Franchises, tropes… They’ve always worked in similar ways. Every genre found tropes to help audiences find that comforting familiarity.

The language of movies is a special thing. They speak to audiences in ways that might not be obvious. There are visual cues such as the use of colour or recurring props. There are musical cues like a character theme or dissonance in an unsettling moment. There are also tropes. These story beats frequently get used to turn stories in ways that have been done before. They’ve been tested to work, and audiences tend to enjoy them. Each of these elements blend together to speak the language of film. It’s that language that communicates the entire cinematic experience to the viewer. That language is the magic of movies.

Part of the language of these posts are the notes:

• Mentioned in this post were Snake Eater (week 320), Street Corner Justice (week 391), Die Another Day (week 153), Ice (week 365), and Superfast! (week 229).
• One of the FBI agents in Stone Cold was played by Richard Gant. It was his fifth Sunday “Bad” Movies appearance. His other appearances were in Ed (week 11), Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday (week 85), Norbit (week 227), and Godzilla (week 282).
• Chains, the leader of The Brotherhood, was played by Lance Henriksen, who was also in Monster Brawl (week 99), Super Mario Bros. (week 248), and The Da Vinci Treasure (week 268).
• After a long time away from Sunday “Bad” Movies, Sam McMurray reappeared as one of the two main FBI agents in Stone Cold. His previous movies were The Craigslist Killer (week 17) and Baby Geniuses (week 50).
• William Forsythe was in Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo (week 20) as well as Stone Cold.
• Stone Cold was the second appearance of Laura Albert, who was also in Road House (week 200).
• Finally, two actors from Xanadu (week 216) were in Stone Cold. They were Michael James and David Tress.
• Have you seen Stone Cold? Did you enjoy it? What did you think about the use of action tropes in it? What are some of your favourite action tropes? Let me know all this and more in the comments or on Twitter.
• If there are movies that you want to suggest for future Sunday “Bad” Movies posts, tell me about them. You can find me on Twitter, or you could just leave a comment below. I’m always checking for suggestions.
• Head on over to Instagram and give a look see to the Sunday “Bad” Movies account. It’s worth it.
• For the final little bit here, I’m going to be giving you a little look ahead to see what’s coming up next week. Yes, I do this at the end of every post. I’ll be venturing well into the past for the next movie. It’s a cautionary tale about drugs. No, it’s not Reefer Madness (week 339). I already covered that one. This time, I’ll be checking out The Cocaine Fiends. I hope you’ll join me next week for the post. See you soon.