The Five Manliest Teams, Pre-Expendables

As you know, The Expendables is coming on August 13th, and promises to create a testosterone explosion the likes of which have been little seen on this earth.  It has a sample from each star in the Zodiac of manliness, and would seem unstoppable.  And, yet, there are some teams which are almost indescribably manly, that cause young boys to suddenly burst with muscles and chest hair, and women to swoon in a three mile radius from the sheer chest-thumping testosterone.

Here are the top five..

5) The Untouchables (1987)

Cast: Kevin Costner, Sean Connery, Andy Garcia, and Charles Martin Smith

The Sheer Manliness:

Bust on Costner all you want, there was no denying he was a handsome man back in the ’80s.  The same is true of Andy Garcia, and Sean Connery is, well, Sean Connery.  He can make anything look good.

So why does this rank?  Several reasons.  First, Costner starts out with a stick lodged firmly up the alimentary canal, and ends the movie by throwing one of the bad guys off a roof.  Connery grabs a few shotguns and casually bursts into a whiskey operation ready to fill some gangsters with buckshot.  Garcia does a home-run slide to save a baby and then blows away a hostage taker while lying down.  It’s such a group of men that Charles Martin Smith, who makes a career of playing nerds and accountants, starts drinking whiskey from bullet-riddled barrels and gunning down mooks with a tommy gun.

How much of this is due to the fact that David Mamet, not exactly a shrinking violet himself, wrote the script, we’re not sure, but geez.  We half-expect Costner to just bludgeon Al Capone to death with his enormous testes.

4) The Dirty Dozen (1967)

Cast: Lee Marvin, Ernest Borgnine, Telly Savalas, Jim Brown John Cassavettes, and Charles freakin’ Bronson

The Sheer Manliness:

So you’ve got Walker from Point Blank, the guy who was wrong at the top of his voice in Bad Day at Black Rock, Kojak, one of the greatest football players ever, the first great independent filmmaker, and Harmonica.

Together, they murder half of the German army with bullets, high explosives, and gasoline.  It sounds like a bad fanfic or a movie that was never made, but not only was it made, it was, and is, absolutely awesome.

3) Ocean’s Eleven (2001)

Cast: George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Matt Damon, Andy Garcia (again), Carl Reiner, Bernie Mac…oh, to heck with it, let’s just say all of Hollywood.

The Sheer Manliness:

While there’s plenty to be said for things blowing up and killing Nazis, just as much has to be said for sneaking into buildings and stealing things from people who deserve it.  Brains are just as awesome as brawn, and the “Ocean’s” series exemplifies it, provided we kind of squint at the second one a little and forget that whole scene with Bruce Willis.

Whether it’s Clooney taking a beating just to throw the bad guy off the scent, Damon playing a complete nebbish while relieving somebody of needed keys or access codes, or Brad Pitt performing in his standard role of standing around and looking cooler than is allowed by law, you’ve got a heck of a lot of testosterone in a teeeeeeny little space.  Probably why they made so much money.

2) Zombieland (2009)

Cast: Woody Harrelson, Jesse Eisenberg, Emma Stone, Abigail Breslin

The Sheer Manliness:

It might seem a little weird to consider a movie that features Woody from Cheers, a skinny guy, and two women he outweighs as a manly team, but we ask you to consider the following: first, we meet Eisenberg’s character Columbus after he outruns a bunch of zombies, kills another with a shotgun, and then throws still another into a concrete wall by crashing his car.  We see Tallahassee waste dozens of zombies by locking himself in a cage and start wasting people.  Wichita and Little Rock are both more than capable of getting the drop on men twice their size, and actually drop plenty of zombies.  And Little Rock is twelve.

In short, a zombie apocalypse is the best thing that ever happened to people’s capacity for handing out beatdowns.  Just not for anything else.

1) The Seven Samurai (1954)

Cast: Toshiro Mifune, Takashi Shimura, Isao Kimura, Yoshio Inaba, Daisuke Kato, Minoru Chiaki, Seiji Miyaguchi

The Sheer Manliness:

This is, unarguably, the movie that defined the “men on a mission” movie and as such, takes pride of place on the list.  But make no mistake, it’s not just about getting there first.  It’s about getting there first, trashing the place, lighting the building on fire, and then going across the street for a sake to watch the fire.

“The Seven Samurai” is that rare thing, a three-and-a-half hour action movie that kicks butt for every single minute.  Whether it’s Kambei, the leader, ignoring codes of honor in order to rescue a little girl, or Kikuchiyo grabbing a seat next to the bandit he’s about to kill to mooch some tobacco, you haven’t seen a movie that applies foot to butt better.  In fact, this movie is so bad-ass that the best swordsman in the film was played by an actor who’d never so much as picked up a katana in his life, something to think about when you’re arguing who was more awesome.

Did we forget a team?  Tell us in the comments!