Robert John Burke Movies
Tall, chiseled-face character actor Robert John Burke has been acting since the 1970s, but he is best known to art house audiences as a regular member of New York-based director Hal Hartley's stock company of decidedly non-Hollywood actors.Born on Long Island, Burke studied acting at S.U.N.Y. Purchase in the early '70s. After he graduated from college, Burke began acting in TV, appearing on such shows as As the World Turns and Happy Days. Though he made his feature film debut in The Chosen (1981), Burke devoted his energies in the early '80s to an experimental teaching program designed to involve students directly in the arts. Burke returned to movies and TV in the latter half of the 1980s with roles in actioner Wanted Dead or Alive (1986), TV movie comedy Pass the Ammo (1989), and late-'80s dance trend vehicle Lambada (1989).
Burke's fortunes began to change when he was cast in the lead role of an enigmatic ex-con who returns to his Long Island hometown in the then-unknown Hartley's first feature, The Unbelievable Truth (1990). Shot on a shoestring budget in 11 days, The Unbelievable Truth garnered positive notice for Hartley's distinctly offbeat, dark comic sensibility and his stars' deadpan, wry performances. Burke followed The Unbelievable Truth with a supporting part in the Oscar-nominated 1930s coming of age film Rambling Rose (1991) and a high-profile starring role replacing Peter Weller as the imposing eponymous cyborg law enforcer in Robocop 3 (1992).
Burke stayed busy from then on, alternating between independent movies and Hollywood projects. Working with Hartley again, Burke starred as one of a pair of brothers searching for their ballplayer-turned-anarchist father in the quirky yet appealing Simple Men (1992); he played a smaller role in Hartley's troubled romance triad Flirt (1995). Burke also acted more than once with the far less celebrated independent filmmaker Eric Schaeffer, appearing in Schaeffer's industry insider comedy My Life's in Turnaround (1993) and self-indulgent romantic comedy If Lucy Fell (1996). Outside of the New York independent scene, Burke played Reese Witherspoon's African gamekeeper father in the children's adventure A Far Off Place (1993), joined the distinguished cast populating Tombstone (1993) (the Kurt Russell version of the Wyatt Earp Western legend), appeared in Oliver Stone's third Vietnam movie, Heaven and Earth (1993), and starred as the cursed obese lawyer in Stephen King's horror yarn Thinner (1996). Continuing to show his versatility in both comedy and drama, Burke joined the supporting cast of the light-hearted buddy chase movie Fled (1996) and starred as Natasha Gregson Wagner's father in the bayou love story First Love, Last Rites (1997). Burke returned to TV in the late '90s in two acclaimed HBO productions, the ambitious miniseries From the Earth to the Moon (1998) and the wrenching Vietnam War docudrama A Bright Shining Lie (1998).
At the start of the 2000s, Burke reunited with Hal Hartley for the Cannes Film Festival entry No Such Thing (2001). Drawing upon his varied experience, not to mention his formidable mien, Burke played the mammal/lizard Beast to Sarah Polley's Beauty in Hartley's singular reworking of the fairy tale romance. ~ Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide
In this second sequel to Robocop, the mechanical humanoid opposes the evil designs of his creators, who have gone corrupt and are trying to take over all real estate in Detroit, kicking the poorer citizens out of their homes and turning them out into the streets. ~ All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Robert John Burke, Nancy Allen, (more)
Rambling Rose is the most part a flashback, related by grown-up Southerner Buddy Hillyer (John Heard). The bulk of the film takes place in 1935, when rambunctious backwoods housekeeper Rose (Laura Dern) virtually invades the Hillyer household. Daddy Hillyer (Robert Duvall), a bed-rock Southern gentleman, welcomes the congenitally amoral but basically goodhearted Rose into his house, carefully fending off her ill-timed romantic advances. But Rose can't help feeling smitten with him; meanwhile, she has also drawn the attentions of 13-year-old Buddy (Lukas Haas). Based on the novel by screenwriter Calder Willingham, Rambling Rose was not the box-office breakthrough that many expected for director Martha Coolidge; though it fizzled financially, the film did manage to secure Oscar nominations for both Dern and her real-life mother Diane Ladd. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Laura Dern, Robert Duvall, (more)
Writer-director Hal Hartley's first feature -- shot in less than 12 days in his backyard for a mere $200,000 -- is a dry and dark comedy about the dangerous undercurrents that exist below the surface of normal middle class existence. Over the credits, Josh (Robert Burke), a man garbed in black, is seen hitch-hiking back to his Long Island home. People ask him, "Are you a priest?" and Josh responds, "No. I'm a mechanic." Back in Long Island in the town of Lindenhurst, beautiful and somber 17-year-old Audry (Adrienne Shelly) is busy worrying about the forthcoming apocalypse. Josh arrives in Lindenhurst and is hired by Audry's father (Chris Cooke) as a mechanic at his garage. But Audry's father worries about him, particularly when he falls in love with Audry. Her father's problems compound when Audry dumps her old boyfriend and rejects an invitation to attend Harvard. The whole town is now gossiping about Audry's new boyfriend, with rumors spreading that Josh is a mass murderer who killed two members of the family of local waitress Pearl (Julia McNeal). Pearl tells Audry, "He seems like a nice man." Audry responds, "Even though he killed your father and your sister?" Audry finally makes her father happy when she tells him she won't see Josh again, but dad's relief is short-lived when Audry informs him she's moving to New York to become an underwear model. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Adrienne Shelly, Robert John Burke, (more)
One of several films released to trade on the short-lived Lambada craze (it was an especially sexy Latin dance in case you don't remember), Lambada stars J. Eddie Peck as Kevin Laird, a mathematics teacher at an exclusive Beverly Hills high school who by night puts away his slide rule and shuffles down to the barrio where, as Blade, he frequents a disco called No Man's Land and cuts loose, instructing the thermal-heated females on how to dance the lambada. After the bumping and grinding, he takes the ladies to a back room where he helps them get their GEDs. It appears that all is well with Kevin; he is appointed head of the mathematics department by principal Singleton (Keene Curtis) and his family never questions why he goes out at night dressed in leather and earrings. But then one of his students, Sandy (Melora Hardin), spots Kevin's gyrating pelvis when she heads to No Man's Land after an argument with her boyfriend Dean (Ricky Paull Goldin). Sandy begins to frequent the club and it is not long before Kevin's double-life is revealed. Dean comes to the club to take Sandy back and a disgruntled member of Kevin's barrio entourage, Ramone (Shabba-Doo), tells Dean the truth about Kevin. The result is a rumble between the posh high school kids and the barrio dropouts. Kevin is promptly fired, but a petition by Sandy reinstates him as the two opposing groups of kids square off in a math competition. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- J. Eddie Peck, Melora Hardin, (more)
- 1988
When Claire (Linda Kozlowski) learns her grandmother has been bilked out of $50,000 by the crooked televangelists Ray (Tim Curry) and Darla Porter (Annie Potts), she recruits her redneck boyfriend Jesse (Bill Paxton) to help recover the money. They travel to the Tower of Bethlehem deep in the Arkansas woods to break into the studio and hold the hosts of the show hostage. This timely comedy came in the wake of scandals involving real-life televangelists Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker and Jimmy "I Have Sinned" Swaggert. Neil Cohen and Joel Cohen wrote the screenplay. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Bill Paxton, Linda Kozlowski, (more)
- 1986
- R
This confusing horror movie tells the terrible tale of three lovely adolescent girls whose dates are zombified by a crazed scientist and his equally looney assistant. Things get really messy when the new zombies attack the scientist's own daughter. Fortunately, she is smart and manages to stop them with her super computer. The film features violence and gratuitous nudity. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Debbie Laster, Debra Hunter, (more)
Nick Randall (Rutger Hauer) is a modern-day bounty hunter who goes after notorious terrorist Malak Al Rahim (Gene Simmons) in this action feature. Nick is called on after Malak disrupts Los Angeles with a series of fatal bombings. William Russ plays Nick's friend and retired LAPD lieutenant Danny Quintz, with Robert Guillaume as CIA agent and former partner Philmore Walker. Nick tries to avoid being one of many caught in Malak's murderous bloodbath. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Rutger Hauer, Gene Simmons, (more)
