Michael Douglas vs. Richard Gere
Battle of the Clench-Jawed Clods

In all the public outcry over the lack of interesting roles in Hollywood films for women of a certain age, it's easy to overlook the fact that there aren't all that many interesting roles for men of a cerain age, either. Sure, it's probably more likely that a man will be, say, nominated for an Oscar in his fifties, sixties, or seventies than it is for a woman, but that doesn't mean the role is all that special. I mean, Jack Nicholson in As Good As It Gets?! He's quirky! He's abrasive! He's...zzzzzzzzzz. Al Pacino in Scent of a Woman? We know he's blind, but what's with the yelling? Michael Douglas in Wall Street? Ooooh, he's a crooked, oily bastard. That's a stretch.

Richard Gere has never won an Oscar (though he does have a couple of Razzies), and his newest effort, The Mothman Prophecies, isn't likely to net him one. When we first started seeing the ads on TV, our first thought was, "Aw, poor Debra Messing has to do that in her hiatus?" Our second thought was, "Chaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaapstick!" Our third thought was, "That part could have so easily gone to Michael Douglas, and it wouldn't have made any difference to the movie."

That got us thinking that the last several roles on both Gere's and Douglas's résumés are pretty interchangeable. Gere in The Mothman Prophecies (or, at least, in the trailers, since we don't plan to get any closer to the movie than that) reminded us of Douglas in Don't Say a Word: tense, scared, trying to beat the clock on a tough, seemingly impossible case, working their jaws like they're masticating a particularly unyielding ball of tar. Douglas in 2000's Wonder Boys -- the flummoxed, embattled, put-upon English professor -- has its doppelganger in Gere's flummoxed, embattled, put-upon gynecologist in Dr. T. and the Women. Gere played an assassin in The Jackal, Douglas in One Night at McCool's. Both have even squired Sharon Stone -- Gere in Intersection, and Douglas in Basic Instinct. (As for Gere's notorious recent flop and Razzie winner Autumn in New York, in which he plays a man carrying on with a woman less than half his age...well, we suppose it's possible Douglas is doing some intense Method preparation for a role like that right now.)

But even given the parallels and crossovers -- of which, as you see, there are many -- the issue is not so much that the two actors are aping one another's movements: it's that you could substitute one in any of the other's movies and not think it much of a stretch. We can easily imagine Gere playing drug czar Robert Wakefield in Traffic, instead of Douglas: Gere has the requisite age, capacity for playing insincere concern, and proven record of overacting that would allow him to blend whether checking out the U.S./Mexico border at Tijuana or catching his daughter freebasing in suburban Ohio. Douglas could easily make a spectacle of himself as a wrongly incarcerated American fighting for his release from a Chinese prison in Red Corner. It's easy to picture Gere, instead of Douglas, strutting around with a giant gun in The Ghost and the Darkness because we've already seen him in the self-important period melodrama Sommersby. Perhaps it's a stretch to think of Douglas instead of Gere in a gooey romantic comedy like Runaway Bride, but maybe not; Douglas did, after all, get in touch with his gooey romantic side in The American President.

We defy you to pull up both actors' CVs on the IMDb, choose any movie at random from the past ten years, and find an instance where the one actor was so perfectly cast, and made the part so indeliby his own, that the other wouldn't probably have done just as competent a job. It can't be done, because they are, at this point, pretty much the same. And since we don't think either one of them is such hot shit, we're fine with that.

Advantage: Ummmm...Douglas. Why not? At least Traffic was a good movie, even if he didn't add all that much to it.