2020 is shaping up to be a huge year for actor Vin Diesel. First, he’s bringing an iconic comic book character to life in Bloodshot. Then, he’s making his eighth appearance in the wildly popular Fast Saga, as Dominic Toretto leads his family against his vengeful brother in F9.
Normally this would be our cue to do a “Vin Diesel’s Ten Best Movies” list. But as Diesel has a habit of revisiting certain roles again and again, that would result in a pretty repetitive line-up. Instead, we’re focusing on the eight roles that have defined his Hollywood career. It’s a resume built a quarter mile at a time.
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8. Xander Cage in the xXx Series
With Diesel’s star on the rise in 2002, the time had come to craft a new action/adventure franchise entirely around him. The result was basically James Bond for the Mountain Dew generation. Xander Cage is the sort of charismatic, testosterone-fueled hero Diesel was born to play. Cage was presented as a reckless anti-hero with a love of extreme sports, stunts and car theft (often all rolled into one). That made him the perfect candidate to join the NSA and infiltrate a terrorist cell called Anarchy 99 made up of men and women just like him.
Though a bit light on plot and full of familiar spy movie cliches, xXx succeeded on the strength of Diesel’s action movie swagger, his chemistry with the sultry Asia Argento and rivalry with the devious Marton Csokas, and an endless series of high-octane stunts that would make James Bond blanch.
As with The Fast and the Furious, the xXx series faltered when it tired to make due without Diesel in the second installment. Fans were left with a middling sequel with lame action sequences and Ice Cube tasked with the thankless job of filling in as the lead. But thankfully, Diesel reprised the role for the brainless but thoroughly entertaining xXx: The Return of Xander Cage in 2017.
7. Chris Varick in Boiler Room
If you need proof that Diesel can do more on screen than just punch, explode, and/or drag race his problems away, Boiler Room serves as an early example. Boiler Room is a prototypical The Wolf of Wall Street, and in fact was inspired by the same real-life group of unscrupulous Wall Street investors. It features the likes of Giovanni Ribisi, Ben Affleck, and yes, Diesel as ambitious brokers working for a crooked firm that preys on rich clients.
Though not the star of the show, Diesel’s Chris Varick still stands out as a hotshot veteran amid a sea of suit-clad vultures. The scene where Varick demonstrates how to close a sale alone justifies this movie’s placement on this list. But Varick also stands out as a more nuanced character – one of the few besides Ribisi’s protagonist to show guilt over the ruined lives left in their wake.
6. Private Carpazo in Saving Private Ryan
Though you could classify Saving Private Ryan as an action movie, it’s a far cry from the testosterone-driven epics Diesel usually seeks out. Few films have so successfully captured the horror and carnage of war. Diesel himself is hardly the muscle-bound, invincible hero of the day. He’s just an ordinary grunt face down in the mud and grime of Normandy Beach. In fact, his Private Adrian Caparzo is the first of the main cast of soldiers to die.
It says something that this movie places as high as it does despite Diesel’s relative lack of screen time. Caparzo is felled by a sniper in the second major battle scene of the movie, and the tense standoff coupled with Diesel’s dramatic, emotional performance makes it one of the movie’s strongest scenes. This role helped put Diesel on the map in the late ’90s and pave the way for his rise to stardom.
5. Richard B. Riddick in the Chronicles of Riddick Series
After two disappointing Alien sequels in a row during the ’90s, it was Vin Diesel who finally came along to redeem the dark, claustrophobic, monster-infested sci-fi sub-genre. Pitch Black proved to be a worthy successor to the Alien mantle, offering a simple but engaging conflict as a spaceship makes an emergency landing on a remote world populated by savage beasts who dwell in the darkness. Diesel’s Riddick is a gruff convict whose superhuman abilities and night-vision make him the one man capable of fighting back.
Pitch Black eventually birthed a entire franchise collectively known as The Chronicles of Riddick, spanning multiple live-action sequels, video games and a direct-to-DVD animated movie. The series has seen its highs and lows (surprisingly, the games have been the highlight). But the common factor among every project has been Diesel. Whether acting or just providing his distinctive, gravelly voice, Diesel’s Riddick has kept the light shining through good and bad.
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4. Jackie DiNorscio in Find Me Guilty
If you ask ten people to describe Vin Diesel, all of them will give you a near identical response. Shaved head, big muscles, tight shirts, deep voice, intense stare, etc. For all his screen presence, his roles don’t have a lot of range or variety, right? Well, Find Me Guilty would suggest otherwise. This movie hit during a time when Diesel was working to rebuild and reinvent his career after the disastrous Chronicles of Riddick. You don’t get much farther from Riddick and Xander Cage than Jackie DiNorscio.
Find Me Guilty is based on a real-world legal standoff between then-District Attorney of New York Rudy Giuliani and the Luchesi crime family. Diesel’s DiNorscio is a former Mafia goon given the chance to reduce a long sentence by testifying against his former bosses. While the movie is often bloated and unfocused, Diesel’s performance is a real highlight. He put on weight, had hair, wore prosthetics, and basically did everything he could to morph into a new man. Only his voice remains to identify him. This stunning transformation is reason enough to watch Find Me Guilty.
3. Groot in the Marvel Cinematic Universe
There are any number of powerful heroes or villains Diesel could have played in the MCU, but instead Marvel relied on his skills as a vocal performer to bring one of their strangest heroes to life. Diesel is the voice of Groot a sentient tree who only ever seems to speak three words. Despite that, Diesel is able to bring depth and emotional complexity to the character through subtle changes in tone and inflection. His is actually one of the more impressive Marvel movie performances to date.
Marvel has managed to keep Groot fresh and exciting over the course of multiple Guardians of the Galaxy and Avengers movies, transforming Groot from genteel adult to plucky infant and then surly teenager. We can only hope that transformation continues as Marvel gears for a third Guardians of the Galaxy movie.
2. Dominic Toretto in The Fast Saga
“I live my life a quarter mile at a time. Nothing else matters: not the mortgage, not the store, not my team and all their bulls***. For those ten seconds or less, I’m free.”
That’s pretty much Dominic Toretto in a nutshell. This is the role that cemented Diesel’s growing reputation as a charismatic Hollywood anti-hero in 2001. Like Patrick Swayze in Point Break or Harrison Ford in the Star Wars trilogy, Dom is the badass foil to the movie’s straitlaced protagonist, Brian O’Conner (Paul Walker). Diesel barrels through the movie with his rippling muscles, fast cars and heart of gold before riding off into the sunset.
Even if Diesel’s role in the series stopped there, it would be enough to rank. But though he skipped the first sequel and appeared only in a cameo in the second, Diesel rocketed back onto the scene with 2009’s Fast & Furious and hasn’t slowed down since. He’s battled everyone from Dwayne Johnson to Jason Statham and lived to tell the tale.
Now Diesel’s Toretto is squaring off against his long-lost younger brother (played by John Cena) in the upcoming F9, and we may be getting a two-part Fast & Furious 10 after that. This is one franchise that knows how to age gracefully.
1. The Iron Giant
As strange as it may sound, Vin Diesel’s best role isn’t even a live-action movie. But anyone who’s actually seen The Iron Giant knows this fact. This might just be the best non-Disney animated film ever produced. Far more than just a tale of a boy and his giant, robot friend, The Iron Giant had plenty to say about violence, Cold War paranoia, and finding your place within the world.
The most impressive part is that Diesel’s role as the titular Giant was marked by simple, terse lines of dialogue. But Diesel brought nuance and gravitas to each line, giving the Giant a stunning sense of humanity and tragedy. Clearly, he could have had a successful career as a voice-over artist if the action hero thing never worked out.
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For more on 2020’s Diesel overload, learn why Diesel wanted to play Bloodshot and find out everything you need to know about the Bloodshot movie. Then see why F9 has fans rejoicing about #JusticeForHan.
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Jesse is a mild-mannered staff writer for IGN. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on Twitter.
Source: IGN.com From Groot to Dominic Toretto: Vin Diesel's 8 Best Roles