Underappreciated Actors: Rick Aviles
Filed Under (Movies) by admin on 13-05-2009
Tagged Under : Rick Aviles, Underappreciated Actors
Well, when I said Robert Davi was born to play movie villains, I forgot to leave a little room for him to be topped by Rick Aviles, a man you most definitely would not have been seeing as a Hollywood protagonist, even if he had not tragically passed away far too young in 1995 (at age 42).
But the man did evil and he did it well.
Aviles had the good fortune to both kill Patrick Swayze, and to attempt to murder (but be murdered by) Al Pacino.
Aviles achieved the former feat in the Oscar-winning film Ghost, and the latter in Carlito’s Way. As Willie Lopez in Ghost, Aviles was utterly disgusting as a low-rent murderous louch who would just as soon take a human life as not. You were all too happy when the shadowy helldemons came to take his warped spirit to the underworld with them.
As a murderous low-rent drug dealer in Carlito’s Way, you weren’t too sad to see Aviles take a bullet to the face either, as he fired away at Carlito Brigante (Pacino). Aviles had a knack for making you hate him and was surely on his way to becoming a Hollywood staple in a role he was pinning down with authority.
Indeed, Aviles has been referred to as “the poor man’s Luis Guzman,” another underappreciated actor who also appeared in Carlito’s Way (as Pachanga, Carlito’s bodyguard). In the years since Aviles’ passing, Guzman has gone on to greater heights and fame, possibly in part by absorbing the roles that may have gone to his primary competitor (and performing them quite well in his own right).
Aviles also appeared in several other notable projects, with roles of varying size. They include Street Smart, The Godfather III, The Cannonball Run and Waterworld.
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