Men of Action

This weekend two action stars from different generations will go head to head with new films that say as much about the current state of moviegoing as they do about the stars themselves.

The matchup of septuagenarian screen legend Clint Eastwood in “Blood Work” and thirtysomething New Wave heartthrob Vin Diesel in “XXX” brings to mind how much Hollywood has changed since the days of Eastwood’s ‘70s iconic hero Dirty Harry and how the definition of an action hero has evolved.

At this point in his career, Eastwood’s appeal is mainly to an older audience--the type of crowd that doesn’t flock to the megaplex for a film’s opening, which means “Blood Work” is likely to have a modest ($10-million) opening.

The pumped-up Diesel and “XXX” are aimed straight at the teen and young adult crowd, the heaviest moviegoers; the film is forecast to have an opening weekend of $50 million (though a number of summer blockbusters have done much bigger business than had been forecast by their studios, such as Disney’s “Signs” and New Line’s “Austin Powers in Goldmember”).

Eastwood’s definitive street cop drama “Dirty Harry” came out on Dec. 22, 1971. That movie, which ended up taking in $35 million at the box office, firmly established Eastwood as an action hero; his reputation had been building from years of “spaghetti westerns” and other roles. It was “a “huge, huge hit,” at the time, said Dan Marks, head of EDI Nielsen, a box-office tracking firm. Those were the days when movie tickets cost about $1.50 and no such thing as a megaplex existed.

Eastwood’s Harry Callahan, a smart-talking, criminal-hating cop, uttered classic lines such as, “Being as this is a .44 Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world, [that] would blow your head clean off, you’ve got to ask yourself one question: Do I feel lucky? Well, do ya punk?”

Eastwood plays a cop again in Warner Bros.’ “Blood Work.” Based on the Michael Connelly detective novel of the same name, the new film is a straightforward murder mystery sprinkled with romance and jazzy tunes in the background aimed primarily at the 45-and-older crowd. Like the 1998 film “Space Cowboys,” which dealt squarely with the issue of getting old, Eastwood’s character in “Blood Work” is not afraid to show his age--he even suffers a heart attack while chasing a murder suspect.

“Dirty Harry” was so well received that its box-office prowess spawned sequels, said Marks. There have been five Dirty Harry movies over the years; “The Enforcer” (1976) brought in $46.2 million and “Sudden Impact” (1983) earned $67.6 million.

But more money is on the line in today’s Hollywood, where opening at No. 1 for certain movies is crucial--something that Eastwood griped about in a recent interview.

“Who cares who is No. 1?” he told the trade publication the Hollywood Reporter. “Every horror film is practically No. 1 on its first weekend. But you have got to play it for the long haul.”

“XXX,” from Sony’s Revolution Studios, meanwhile, is all adrenaline, in-your-face action with a heavy-metal soundtrack for the consumption of people under 30. Diesel’s Xander Cage is a nihilistic, tattooed con out for himself. His prowess is such that he out-snowboards an avalanche. Xander Cage would likely have been one of the bad guys in the days of Dirty Harry.

Diesel’s and Eastwood’s films have sharply contrasting cinematic styles as well. “XXX” is shot much like a music video, filled with short bursts of action and cartoon-style violence. “Blood Work” is more leisurely paced, the kind of old-fashioned character-driven thriller that Hollywood doesn’t make much anymore.

The pressure of having a big box-office return is heavy on “XXX.” That expectation has been fueled partly by a high-profile, aggressive marketing campaign for the film and by the success of Diesel’s last film, “The Fast and the Furious,” which ended up grossing more than $140 million domestically. Basically unknown a little more than a year ago, the multicultural Diesel has become an engine who can drive movie franchises, the lifeblood of studios these days.

Now the studio is trying to rein in expectations it helped create.

“It’s one of the true things about what this [industry] is about,” said Tom Sherak, a partner at Revolution. “You can’t stop people from saying it’s going to make trillions of dollars.... The only way you can control the spin is if you control yourself. You can’t put unfair expectations on movies.”

“XXX” cost about $85 million to make and about $40 million to market, and must compete with M. Night Shyamalan’s “Signs,” which opened to a surprising $60 million last weekend. New Line’s “Austin Powers in Goldmember,” released three weeks ago, raked in more than $71 million in its first weekend. (Like “Austin Powers,” “XXX” is an update of sorts of the James Bond spy genre).

“What has changed is the perception of success,” rued veteran publicist Stan Rosenfield. “God forbid you should come in second. There is so much money involved that the pressure on everyone to perform is far greater that it was then. It is no longer acceptable for your company to just make a profit. There are a lot of movies out there that have made the studio an enormous amount of money and they are looked at as failures.”

In an industry where franchises and sequels dominate the summer marketplace, Revolution Studios executives had signed Diesel and director Rob Cohen up for a sequel even before filming began on “XXX.” Diesel was paid $20 million to do “XXX” and its sequel.

Competing studios seem to up the ante on one another’s films. Hoping to raise expectations, studios will forecast intentionally high numbers on one another’s movies. When it comes to their own films however, they low-ball it.

The studios propagate the obsession with being first, often selling their movies in advertisements as “The No. 1 Film in America.” They understand that in America, everyone loves a winner.

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Times staff writer Susan King contributed to this story.