From Spielberg to sharks: Remembering actor Tom Sizemore
From shoot outs in LA streets in Heat, to swimming with sharks in two very different shark films, to helping save a private named Ryan in Steven Spielberg's World War 2 epic drama, Tom Sizemore, always left a lasting impression in his films.
The actor, who has died aged 61 after being on end of life support after a brain aneurism, was often there as stellar support and helped add grit, gravitas and colour to such films as Heat, True Romance, Pearl Harbor Natural Born Killers, Bringing Out The Dead, Black Hawk Down and Strange Days.
For many, he'll be best remembered as part of the excellent ensemble cast in Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan (1998) as Sgt Mike Horvath, who brought some much needed heart to the horrors of war.
Sizemore's battle with drugs was well documented, even then, with - according to The Guardian - Spielberg telling the actor that he would be given a drug test at the end of every day of principal photography and his scenes would be re-shot with someone else if he failed even one. He stayed clean and stayed in the Oscar-winning picture, the film and our experience is all the better for it.
Saving Private Ryan saw Steven Spielberg and John Williams team up once again, but there was also to be a future JAWS link, as part of the cast was Demetri Goritsas. Over 20 years later he would go onto play Roy Scheider in the West End and Canadian runs of The Shark Is Broken, which is based on the behind the scenes events on the making of JAWS and is written by Joseph Nixon and Ian Shaw, the son of Quint actor Robert Shaw.
The USS Indianapolis speech on stage, delivered by the son of the original actor dressed like Quint on the set of the Orca is simply stunning, and Tom Sizemore featured in a film version of that actual sinking, alongside Nicolas Cage and Deep Blue Sea’s Thomas Jane, in USS Indianapolis: Men of Courage.
The 2008 film was directed by Mario Van Peebles (Jake from JAWS the Revenge) and plays as one part Pearl Harbor meets Titanic and, despite not having a James Cameron sized budget - which is most obvious in the opening dogfight and the CGI USS Indianapolis leaving for sea.
By and large the director pulls off a film that keeps the interest. It really hits high gear for me when the ship sinks and the sharks stay circling.
Cage plays Captain McVay, who was at the ship's helm when it was torpedoed by a Japanese sub, and instils the film with that cinematic quality, even if some of his choices have been more direct to DVD of late.
We get plenty of shark foreshadowing though as Tom Sizemore sets the scene about sailors not standing a chance in the ocean against one, not even if they are good swimmers.
There’s also a shot through a set of shark jaws, a visual riff of sorts on the moment the Orca leaves Amity and the camera frames the boat through the Jaws of a shark through Quint's window. That's the defining shot of Jaws, the film explained in one frame with the jaws seemingly bigger than that of the Orca, swallowing it whole. They really are going to need a bigger boat.
Certainly truth - or based on a true story at least - can be stranger than fiction and I'm sure that when many Jaws fans first saw the Quint monologue they thought it was purely invented for the film.
USS Indianapolis: Men of Courage peels away at some of the layers of the true story behind that and give us a real insight into the horrors of war and the horrors of being stranded in shark infested waters.
And when the sharks arrive, it is expertly done, we know the sharks are coming - after all that is why most of us are here but the first appearance is almost unexpected. You are that caught up in the ship sinking and Nicolas Cage being thrown into the sea by an explosion that it is something of a shock to see a shark appear with his 'dull and lifeless eyes' under the water as Cage fights for air.
As the ship slips beneath the waves the men huddle together but beneath them in the water the silhouetted shapes of sharks begin to gather and swarm.
And Sizemore would be back facing sharks again in 2021’s Megalodon Rising, but this time it’s a group of huge Megalodon sharks.
The Saving Private Ryan actor is the lead in the film which sees an armada of warships trying to take out the giant fish, which is destroying everything in their path. It is directed by Brian Nowak and written by Andrea Ruth, who also wrote Shark Season (2020). All of which sounds like a cross between Battleship (2012) meets The Meg (2018) via Godzilla Vs Kong (2021).
Megalodon Rising was released by The Asylum and is the same studio that also brought us the Sharknado series, the - insert a number - Headed Shark Attack films, Ice Sharks (2016) and Megalodon (2018). Not that this is listed as being a sequel.
One of my personal favourite Tom Sizemore films though is a rare lead role, reportedly replacing first choice Harrison Ford as the no nonsense Lt. Vincent D'Agosta in The Relic.
The 1997 monster movie was essentially JAWS in a museum (are you going to close the exhibits?) and is great B movie fun from Peter Hyams, who also directed Roy Scheider in 2010: The Year We Make Contact.
Sizemore’s murder detective and a museum anthropologist (Penelope Ann Miller) are trapped in a museum on the opening night of a new exhibition, an exhibition which brings with it death and destruction.
Now, the pair must team up to destroy a South American lizard-like god, who's on a people eating rampage in a Chicago museum, making it more opening fright than opening night. And if they don’t stop it, then they’ll become history.
Sizemore may have experienced various troubles off screen and his star power had waned, but it’s still a genuine thrill to see him light up the screen whenever he is in one of those exciting supporting roles. Me, I’m heading back to that Chicago museum to see him take on the mutating lizard god.
Words by Dean Newman
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