Patrick Swayze was one of a kind. He’s the only actor I can think of who was as comfortable cutting a rug on the dance floor as demolishing a room full of bad guys with his fists of fury. When he passed away from pancreatic cancer in 2009, we lost an icon who was never really recognized as the legend he is in his time. In the years since many Patrick Swayze movies have become cult favourites, and with a Road House remake recently a hit, we decided now would be a good time to pick the five best Patrick Swayze movies.
John Millius’s cold war “what if” thriller goes down in the history books as the first-ever PG-13 movie. It was also Patrick Swayze’s first major leading role, with him best known up to this point for a supporting role in Francis Ford Coppola’s The Outsiders. Here, he plays the young leader of a rag-tag group of local teens – including Charlie Sheen, The Outsiders co-star C. Thomas Howell, and future Dirty Dancing co-star Jennifer Grey – who become a deadly militia when the Soviets opt to kick off World War III in their small town. It sounds much sillier than it is, with this a pretty grim (but still butt-kicking) depiction of young people forced to become old before their time to defend their homes. The remake of this was God-awful.
Of all the Patrick Swayze movies on this list, Dirty Dancing was the one that made him one of the biggest stars of the eighties. While he’s about fifteen years too old to be playing the young Johnny Castle, the bad boy dance instructor at the Catskills resort visited by our heroine, “Baby” (Jennifer Grey), the energy and charisma he brings to the role makes us forget all that. This movie not only made him a movie star but also a pop star, with his song off the soundtrack, “She’s Like The Wind,” rocketing up the charts.
While Swayze could have just stuck to romantic movies, he opted to branch out into action, and did so brilliantly with Road House. While it’s a cult sensation now, the truth of the matter was that this movie wasn’t a box office hit in 1989 and was widely mocked. Oh, how the times have changed. I stand by including this on my recent list of the 25 Greatest Action Movies Ever.
While one of his biggest box office hits, of all of Patrick Swayze’s movies on this list, I daresay this is the most underrated. People have forgotten what a powerful romantic thriller this is, with some really nifty genre elements, worked into this story of a ghost (Swayze) trying to solve his own murder. Demi Moore is gorgeous as his true love, while Whoopi Goldberg steals the show as the con-artist psychic helping him. It’s crazy that this came from one of the directors of The Naked Gun (Jerry Zucker), with the climactic scenes of the bad guys being dragged to hell, kicking and screaming pretty gnarly.
Without a doubt, Point Break is the best Patrick Swayze movie on this list. Like Road House, it’s one of the greatest action movies of all time, and Swayze is cast against type as the movie’s bad guy, a surfing zen master bank robber named Bodhi. One of the reasons this movie works as well as it does is that even though you know Bodhi is the guy Keanu Reeves’ FBI agent Johnny Utah is after, you don’t want to believe it’s true. He’s so likable that you are actually rooting against Utah, to a point, and to me, their chemistry is a huge part of the movie’s appeal.
Of course, those aren’t the only great Patrick Swayze movies, with Steel Dawn (1987), Next of Kin (1989), City of Joy (1992), To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar (1995), Black Dog (1998), Donnie Darko (2001), One Last Dance (2003) – which was directed by his wife Lisa Niemi – and many others all being well worth checking out. Do you agree with our picks? Let us know in the comments what you think are the best Patrick Swayze movies!