The Last Action Heroes: The Triumphs, Flops, and Feuds of Hollywood’s Kings of Carnage

De Semlyen (Wild and Crazy Guys), editor of Empire magazine, delivers a testosterone-fueled ode to action movies of the 1980s and ’90s. He goes behind the scenes of the biggest hits of Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Jean-Claude Van Damme, among others, telling, for example, how Jackie Chan saw 1983’s Project A as his attempt to achieve in the U.S. the stardom he already had back in China, and how tensions brewed on the set of Die Hard (1988) when Bruce Willis refused to follow the director’s blocking because he feared it would reveal his hair was thinning. Becoming an action hero takes hard work, as demonstrated by the punishing workouts Arnold Schwarzenegger followed to bulk up, but de Semlyen suggests the era’s hypermasculinity had a dark side, with Steven Seagal facing numerous sexual assault allegations throughout his career. Still, the author shows plenty of love for the high-adrenaline classics he discusses, and fans of Reagan-era blockbusters will eat up tales from the sets of Conan the Barbarian, Rocky IV, and Predator. Additionally, de Semlyen’s astute analysis takes this up a notch (he suggests that ’80s action films satisfied audiences’ appetite for moral simplicity and “a renewed sense of purpose” after the disillusionment of Watergate and the Vietnam War). This packs a punch. (June)