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Whether you knew him from the movies as a soldier or television as an eccentric bachelor, Charlie Sheen has had a lasting presence. He’s been acting so long that you’ll find a few roles from movies you’ve dug. With such a wide range, spotting some of his lesser works is easy.
With the recent Netflix documentary about the actor’s life, aka Charlie Sheen, recently released, it’s worth checking out Sheen’s filmography for all his hits and flops—why not have a bit of a Sheen-a-thon? Getting a complete picture of the actor in his best and worst films can give you a full picture of his rocky and fascinating legacy in acting. From action to comedy, let’s shed some light on Charlie Sheen’s most notable and lesser roles.
Best: Platoon
While some young men tried to find a way to escape being drafted into the Vietnam War, Chris Taylor (Charlie Sheen) dove straight into the conflict. Although approaching war with great aspirations, his vigor erodes when he experiences the inhumanity of war. Soldiers on the same side will fight each other as they debate who to trust in this warzone of uncertainty and cruelty, where every moment is one of dehumanizing terror.
Writer and director Oliver Stone conceived of Platoon based on his experience in the military, intending to present a more accurate depiction of war that doesn’t celebrate it. Following in the footsteps of his father, Martin, who was filming Apocalypse Now when Charlie was just a kid, Charlie nabbed the lead role in Platoon thanks to a recommendation by co-star Willem Dafoe, and he fit perfectly into a role that required great contemplation amid the horrors of the Vietnam War. He gives a brilliantly nuanced performance alongside a strong cast that includes the talents of Tom Berenger, Keith David, and Forest Whitaker, making this one of the greatest war films for being so critical of its morality and mortality.
Best: Wall Street
According to Wall Street corporate expert Gordon Gecko (Michael Douglas), greed is good. The younger stockbroker Bud Fox (Charlie Sheen) hopes to learn from this master of deals how to be greedy enough to rise into the upper echelon of wealthy businessmen. While Bud’s tutelage yields results, his corrupt tactics could threaten his life as the schemes for cash spiral out of control.
Oliver Stone directed Wall Street, a film perfectly timed for the excessive nature of capitalism in the 1980s. While several young actors were considered for the role of Bud, Stone was impressed by Sheen’s stern presentation, which made the character’s naive nature easier to buy. Adding some more authenticity to the film is Bud’s father, played by Charlie’s dad, Martin. It was genius casting and even made for a great joke in Hot Shots Part Deux, where Charlie and Martin pass each other in the film, shouting to each other, “I loved you in Wall Street!”
Best: Major League
Rachel Phelps (Margaret Whitton) has taken ownership of the Cleveland Indians baseball team, and the only way to ensure that she can move the team to Miami is for ticket sales to fall. Desiring failure, she employs an incompetent ensemble of players, ranging from the visually impaired Rick Vaughn (Charlie Sheen) to the fragile catcher Jake Taylor (Tom Berenger). She doesn’t count on the fact that the team might become winners and draw in a bigger crowd for being underdogs.
Major League was equally absurd and charming for posing an underdog comedy around baseball, based on writer/director David S. Ward’s desire for the Cleveland Indians to win something for once. Given his history of being a pitcher in high school, Sheen was a natural choice for the role. He’s fun in the film, but the picture is also worth noting for launching the acting careers of Rene Russo and Wesley Snipes and brilliantly using sportscaster Bob Uecker.
Best: Young Guns
When the rancher John Tunstall (Terence Stamp) is gunned down by Lawrence G. Murphy (Jack Palance), it’s up to his young employees to avenge his death. The young men, dubbed Regulators, are led by Billy the Kid (Charlie’s real-life brother, Emilio Estevez) and are not afraid to embrace the life of outlaws for the sake of their mentor. Gun battles and standoffs coat this stylized depiction of Western revenge and violence.
Young Guns is most notable for its iconic ensemble, which boasts Sheen, Estevez, Kiefer Sutherland, Lou Diamond Phillips, and Dermot Mulroney. Sheen was notable for his role as Richard “Dick” Brewer, the original leader of the Regulators, who still holds a key role in the quest for vengeance and meshes well with the stunning cast. While the film does have issues in how it takes plenty of liberties with history, it’s still a unique film for posing what felt like the Brat Pack of Westerns.
Best: Hot Shots! (and Part Deux)
It’s not easy to follow Leslie Nielsen’s tongue-in-cheek performance in the spoof series The Naked Gun, but Sheen met the call with Hot Shots. Called in for a Top Gun parody, Sheen plays Topper Harley, a cocky aircraft pilot trying to prove himself. While trying to assert himself in the air, he must also deal with his attraction to the seductive Ramada Thompson (Valeria Golino) and taking orders from the absent-minded Rear Admiral Benson (Lloyd Bridges).
Sheen was so perfect for the role that he would return for the sequel, Hot Shots Part Deux. Although the sequel switched to being a parody of Rambo, Sheen was so good at delivering silly lines straight that he could easily mesh into any role. The actor was at his comedic best with such parody roles, making him an easy choice for his roles in Scary Movie 3 and Scary Movie 5.
Worst: The Rookie
Nick Pulovski (Clint Eastwood) is a police detective who isn’t happy that his newest partner is the young and inexperienced David Ackerman (Charlie Sheen). Pulovski has a history of his partners turning up dead in the line of duty, with his latest case on busting some car thieves carrying a personal vendetta for the men who killed his previous partner. To apprehend this gang of criminals, the old gun and the young upstart must put their differences aside if they hope to uphold justice.
Teaming Sheen with Eastwood sounds like a solid buddy cop action movie. But The Rookie just doesn’t work for feeling so tiresome with the buddy-cop tropes and highly questionable choices in casting, hiring a Puerto Rican and a Brazilian to play Germans. It wastes Sheen’s potential as an actor and Eastwood’s directorial skill, highlighting one of his rare missteps.
Worst: Terminal Velocity
Sheen plays Ditch, a skydiving instructor who goes from teaching skills in the skies to working as a spy. A death under his watch leads to his school shutting down, and something about this doesn’t seem right to Ditch. He investigates with special agent Krista Moldova (Nastassja Kinski) and uncovers a conspiracy involving Russians.
Terminal Velocity doesn’t work because it tries too hard to make Sheen seem like a gritty action hero, which was hard to buy after recently seeing him play a parody of that archetype in Hot Shots. It doesn’t help that the action premise is also absurd in how it tries to wrap a skydiving school in with a coup d’état against the Russian government. The only good thing about the film is the unintentionally comedic line where Ditch insists he is more of a flying phallus than a walking one.
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Terminal Velocity finds Charlie Sheen playing a skydiving instructor who becomes entangled in a conspiracy involving Russians.
Worst: Navy SEALS
The Navy SEALS Lt. James Curran (Michael Biehn) and Lt. Dale Hawkins (Charlie Sheen) must face off against the terrorist Ben Shaheed (Nicholas Kadi). Having killed hostages and acquired missiles, the terrorist is in a position to turn the Middle East upside down with attacks that could threaten treaties. It’s up to SEALS and an informed reporter to figure out Shaheed’s tactics and save the world from destruction.
Sheen was a long way away from Platoon, considering that Navy SEALS is less critical of the military. Sheen and Biehn are wasted in thankless roles of generic action heroes who add little to a film that just screams generic. It was such a tiresomely bad movie that it became a punchline of Kevin Smith’s Clerks, where Randall’s comment about video store customers renting the dumbest films cuts to a customer spouting, “Ooo, Navy SEALS!”
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Navy SEALS features Charlie Sheen as part of a SEAL team assigned to stop a terrorist threat.
Worst: All Dogs Go To Heaven 2
As the sequel to the Don Bluth animated comedy, All Dogs Go to Heaven 2 lacks a presence, from the diminished animation budget to Don Bluth’s not returning. Burt Reynolds, who played the lead dog Charlie, also did not return to the film. Charlie finds heaven boring, so he returns to Earth with his pal, Itchy (Dom DeLuise), for another adventure to defeat the evil Carface (Ernest Borgnine).
Released years after the original movie, this tiresome sequel went to theaters instead of ending up on home video like most animated sequels of the 1990s. The animation was dull, the story uninspired, and Sheen isn’t much of an upgrade from Reynolds’s smooth performance. This sequel made a case for why the dogs should’ve stayed in heaven, especially for the lackluster franchise projects that followed with All Dogs Go to Heaven: The Series and An All Dogs Christmas Carol.
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All Dogs Go to Heaven 2 features the dog Charlie returning to Earth to once again stop an evil dog’s intentions when it escapes from the afterlife.
Charlie Sheen has a certain energy about him as an actor. He never feels as though he can try too hard for drama or laughs. He’s far more than just the weird guy who got fired from Two and a Half Men, and hopefully, he’ll be remembered beyond his TV sitcom role.
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