Movies: A Patrick Swayze Tribute

There's been a lot of tributes to Patrick Swayze in the media, but I noticed that most of them don't cover my favorite side of the actor's career - his penchant for starring in off-kilter action movies. Here's a rundown of Swayze's best:

Road House - One of Patrick Swayze's first outings after the success of "Dirty Dancing;" the tagline is "The Dancing's Over. Now it gets dirty." Swayze plays a bouncer from the big city who gets tangled in the rough-and-tumble world of a smalltown bar. It's not a very good movie, but it did inspire this incredible MST3K song:



Point Break - Patrick Swayze is a surfer who moonlights as a bank robber in this guilty pleasure from Kathleen Bigelow. This is actually one of my favorite Swayze characters; there's enough moral ambiguity and flat-out craziness here for him to really sink his teeth in.

Red Dawn - Patrick Swayze leads a ragtag team of teenagers against a Soviet invasion of the U.S. in this memorable, utterly stupid action flick from John Milius. Swayze is a member of an ensemble here, and does a decent job of staying earnest despite the outlandish premise.

Steel Dawn - I like to think of this post-apocalyptic tale as the unofficial sequel to "Red Dawn," as it takes place in a hellish post-WWIII wasteland. Patrick Swayze plays a wandering warrior who protects a town from bandits. Probably the worst movie on the list, but the opening scene features Patrick Swayze killing sand people with a sword, making it required viewing if you like cheesy movies.