Dennis Quaid vs. Bruce Greenwood
Battle of the Beguiling Bounders

Rare indeed is the contemporary Hollywood movie that focuses on a woman. Rarer still the movie that focuses on a woman, and which doesn't involve her achieving self-determination by throwing over some prickish man, unless -- or, sometimes, even if -- she's gay. We're not here to discuss sexual politics in contemporary American cinema, though; we want to talk about the performers who, more often than not, show up as our heroines' sexy antagonists, just begging for their comeuppance.

Dennis Quaid has been working his lupine, proto-Noth grin since his star-making turn in Breaking Away, waaaay back when this commentator was a mere five years old. Since that time, he's vacillated between clench-jawed, overacting leading men roles (in Suspect, Innerspace, the recent Frequency, and most execrably in the mind-bendingly terrible yet compulsively watchable Great Balls of Fire!) and sexy, easygoing, bedroom-eyed, frequently-grinning-that-infamous-grin secondary characters (as in The Right Stuff, The Big Easy, and the quite underrated Parent Trap remake). He tends to be most memorable, however, when he screws over a woman whose integrity (and, as far as the actors are concerned, fame) is vastly superior to Quaid's.

• Exhibit A: Postcards From the Edge. Quaid dates Meryl Streep and then cheats on her with a minor starlet played by Annette Bening. Meryl shoots blanks at him and then sings a country song.
• Exhibit B: Something to Talk About. Quaid cheats on wife Julia Roberts with virtually every woman in Virginia. She freaks out on him in several locations, and then poisons him (though not fatally).

See, when Julia and Meryl want to hurt him, Quaid has to take it, because compared to them, he's nothing. Whereas when you put him in a movie with Kathleen Turner, they get along fine and have a successful (if unconventional) marriage, because, fame-wise, they're on equal footing (insert your own Meg Ryan/Russell Crowe joke here) -- and in Undercover Blues, the woman's self-actualization and triumph over a jerky guy aren't the point.

A woman's self-actualization and triumph over a jerky guy were the point in Double Jeopardy, as well, and yet Bruce Greenwood appeared in a role Dennis Quaid could have played in a coma. But the part didn't require quite the qualities Dennis Quaid would have brought to the role; as my esteemed colleague Gustave has observed, the part needed an actor who was...well, more of an actor, and less of a celebrity -- someone capable of being little more than a blank slate onto which a larger-than-life Ashley Judd (playing the wife he SPOILER frames for his murder when he fakes his death SPOILER END) could project all her worst fears and surpassing hatred. Plus, she's exponentially more famous than Bruce Greenwood is. He can have a perfectly pleasant little mutual affair with Alberta Watson in The Sweet Hereafter, if he likes; they're about equally famous (or, at least, they were then). With Ashley? Yeah, he'd better hop to.

Greenwood also has a healthy sideline playing scientists of varying degrees of evil-ness (in Disturbing Behavior and the TV series Sleepwalkers), and obstructionist bureaucrats (as in this year's Rules of Engagement), but this month sees him return to type by playing iconic Beguiling Bounder John F. Kennedy in Thirteen Days. Granted, that movie isn't about his playing some jag-off for a Susan Sarandon (or someone) to kick to the curb, so much as it is about his blowing that jag Kevin Costner off the screen, and suggesting to Hollywood's casting agents that maybe he's good for more than screwing over Ashley Judd or Samuel L. Jackson, and that maybe the next time a Frequency comes along, his name should turn up on the short list. Because he can do the charming-bastard grin, and he can do the clenched jaw, and he'd probably welcome the opportunity to let Glenn Close smack him around, but there's more he could, and should, be doing.

Advantage: Frankly? Though we think Dennis Quaid is really cute, it's Bruce Greenwood. He has more range.