Help! Which Villian Is Which?

Everyone wants to be Harrison Ford, even Bill Clinton. Especially since the latest survey shows people find Ford more believable than any of our five most recent presidents, including President Ford. But the role of Harrison Ford is already taken. So Clinton had to settle for a cameo in a Jodie Foster picture with Matthew McConaughey, whose name I’m not even gonna bother to learn to pronounce, in the hope that his 15 minutes of fame will be up before I need to.

But if Harrison Ford is everyone’s favorite action hero, when it comes to action villains, there’s a crowded field. For me the confusion started with the summer movie trailers--in almost every one, somebody seemed to be hijacking something. A boat, a plane, another plane--at one point I thought Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau were hijacking a cruise ship, but that proved to be those drugs I did in the ‘60s coming back on me.

I tried to stay alert, but the images kept bleeding into each other. I’d spot Nicolas Cage and assume he was the hijacker and then John Travolta would come on acting like Cage, and vice versa. And I’d realize that I was actually watching a trailer for a different movie, the one by that Hong Kong hotshot director where Travolta and Cage hijack each other’s faces.

Then there’d be this sweaty, greasy-haired hijacker racing through the bowels of some high-tech vehicle, and I’d think, OK, that’s gotta be “Air Force One,” and then Sandra Bullock would show up, dancing with Jason Patric, and I’d realize it was “Speed 2: Cruise Control.” I kept hoping I’d see Bullock dancing with Matthau or Lemmon, or even Dyan Cannon dancing with Patric, but, sad to say, it never happened except in my mind.

I just couldn’t seem to keep Willem Dafoe and John Malkovich and Gary Oldman straight, let alone Cage and Travolta. I knew they were all bad guys, and good actors, and they were trying to take over the known universe, or at least a traveling chunk of it that they could hijack. But I just couldn’t remember who was doing what to whom and why in which movie after I left the theater. And that was even after I’d seen the movies themselves. I felt as if I’d been zapped with that memory-erasing flashy thing from “Men in Black.”

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If you’re like me, you may be experiencing similar difficulties. Quick--and no fair logging onto any Web sites--take this simple test:

Gary Oldman was in: A) “True Romance”; B) “Wild at Heart”; C) “Reservoir Dogs”; D) dinner theater in Florida; E) rehab. Choose two of the above.

Are you sure of your answers? Do you feel lucky? How lucky do you feel, punk? For extra credit, name the actor who played the villain opposite Clint Eastwood in “In the Line of Fire.” See what I mean?

All of the villains are high-class thespians. Cage won an Oscar. Dafoe was nominated for one. Malkovich won an Obie for a Sam Shepard play, “True West.” Oldman is English. So you can’t tell them apart that way.

However, I think Oldman and Malkovich should share the Donald Pleasance Memorial Trophy for weird dialogue delivery. In “Con Air,” Malkovich has to wend his way through this lulu: “The next wings you see will belong to the flies buzzing over your rotting corpse.” Sam Shepard it ain’t. But Malkovich mouths it with as much delicacy as if it were Mercutio’s “Queen Mab” speech from “Romeo and Juliet.”

In “Air Force One,” Oldman gets to spit in Harrison Ford’s face and hiss out the following stunner: “I would defy God himself for Mother Russia!” Anyone who can deliver a message like that without being fazed by it should be working for Western Union, or the Pony Express. Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor the extreme unlikelihood of any human being ever uttering those precise sentiments can stay Oldman from his appointed rounds.

Here’s how to remember who Oldman is: He’s the one who sounds like Bela Lugosi. I was hoping at some point Oldman would announce, “I am Dracula,” and sink his fangs into Harrison Ford’s neck, but alas, that was not to be.

Then there’s the hair thing. Somehow it seems terrorists don’t get to visit the salon that often. Cage, as the good bad guy in “Con Air,” has time in jail to buff up like Robert De Niro in “Cape Fear” and learn Spanish and origami, but just can’t be bothered to get a haircut.

Malkovich, however, despite having killed “more men than cancer,” evidently became best buddies with the prison barber--I’m assuming they didn’t hand him a straight razor and tell him to shave himself. Here’s how to remember who Malkovich is: He’s the one who’s bald with a goatee.

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In “Speed 2” Dafoe’s long, unkempt locks are an obvious tip-off that he’s the terrorist. What’s with the security guys in these movies? Dafoe couldn’t have gotten into Disneyland in the ‘60s, and they let him just waltz on board. And would you let Oldman on Air Force One? Yeah, right. Off the plane, pal. The guys guarding our commander-in-chief couldn’t find Waldo, let alone spot the terrorist. This is in spite of the fact that Oldman’s henchmen all have the same George Clooney Roman haircut, which you’d think would give someone a clue.

And how about those henchmen? Though he does most of the talking, and all of the spitting, Oldman has numerous, disposable henchmen. In “Con Air,” where he plays the good bad guy, Cage has a cellmate in diabetic shock and John Cusack. In “Face/Off,” where he plays the bad bad guy, Cage has an extended family of criminal masterminds, plus, when he’s pretending to be Travolta, the entire resources of the U.S. government.

Malkovich in “Con Air”--bad bad guy, bald with a goatee--has a planeload of scum on his side, including Ving Rhames, a guy in a dress, and a psychotic criminal in a leather face mask who turns out to be indie film fave Steve Buscemi.

But poor Dafoe in “Speed 2” doesn’t have any henchmen at all, just leeches. Yes, leeches. I trust it won’t ruin the movie for you if I reveal this plot point: Dafoe has spent so much time at his computer slaving away for the uncaring cruise company that he has contracted copper poisoning--should we be worried about this? The leeches suck the copper out of his system, allowing him to hijack the plane, er, ship. Here’s how to remember who Dafoe is: He’s the one with the leeches.

Brilliant actor that he is, Dafoe implies that he and the leeches have a twisted relationship, affectionately referring to them as his “nurses” and--in my favorite scene in the entire movie--petting them as he attaches them to his bare chest. But the leeches aren’t gonna garner any supporting actor nominations any time soon, so basically Dafoe is on his own.

OK, let’s review. Here are some key words to help you retain what we’ve learned thus far. Willem “Speed 2” Dafoe: leeches. John “Con Air” Malkovich: bald. Gary “Air Force One” Oldman: Dracula. But what about Nicolas Cage . . . and John Travolta . . . and Nicolas Cage?

Cage in “Con Air”? He’s the one with the bunny. Only an actor of Cage’s caliber--which includes everyone I’ve mentioned, except Bill Clinton and Matthew McConaughey--could utter the line, “Put the bunny back in the box,” with as much dedication as if he were quoting Dostoevsky, which he actually does, for comparison purposes, earlier in the movie.

That’s the point: Cage is the only one who gets to do both! And that’s how to remember him, even though it might seem unfair that Oldman, who’s supposed to be Russian, doesn’t get his Dostoevsky moment. Nicolas “Con Air” Cage: bunny (or Dostoevsky, if you prefer).

Now for the advanced part of the course. At first it seems easy to remember who Cage is in “Face/Off” because he acts completely insane. He dresses up as a priest to plant a bomb, and dances around and sings, and then he hijacks a plane and sings some more while trying to kill Travolta. Cage--bad. Travolta--good. So far so good (or bad). But then--get this!--they switch faces, thanks to a disgusting operation that gives whole new meaning to the expression “suck face.”

So you’d think that Cage would be good and Travolta would be bad, but no! Travolta defuses the bomb and gets a phone call from Harrison Ford or whoever is president at the time. Cage breaks out of prison and kills people.

Cage, when he’s playing good guy Travolta wearing bad guy Cage’s face, does exciting action-y things in a tormented way like he can’t commit to anything. Travolta, playing bad guy Cage wearing good guy Travolta’s face--stay with me--has one helluva good time. He throttles his boss, seduces Joan Allen as Travolta’s uptight wife, and is simply ssssmokin’ in a scene with “Lolita” star Dominique Swain as Travolta’s Lolita-esque daughter.

I’m not sure what this is supposed to prove, except for some deep stuff about the duality of human nature, good and bad as two sides of the same coin, God and the devil struggling for our souls, etc. and a lot more in the same Manichean vein that Dostoevsky could explain much better if he were here.

But it’s clear that being bad is a lot more fun for an actor. That’s how to remember who John “Face/Off” Travolta is: He’s the one having the most fun. Only he’s pretending to be Cage while he’s doing it. And Cage is . . . OK, that’s it. I think I’m getting a migraine. Just study the chart, OK? There’ll be a test on this later. And if you really want to know who the villains are, go see “Men in Black,” where they’re not bad unless they slime on you.