Man Candy: Jason Scott Lee

Jason Scott Lee, like Charleton Heston, spends the majority of his career without pants on. Good for us, because of his startling legs: they're quick and rhythmic, like a ballet dancer's, that you can just fantize rhythmically making love to you. Thighs like that should be outlawed.

I never entirely bought Jason Scott Lee as Bruce Lee in THE DRAGON STORY, because while Bruce Lee was unquestionably a great athlete and actor, his appeal was that he was a likeable everyman, a working-class sort (which is why he is so very identifiable). Jason Scott Lee, though, is a Greek God, clearly handsome, the hottest guy playing beach volleyball.

The very best movie of JSL's career was RAPA NUI. RAPA NUI (1994) is a fascinating movie about a fascinating time: the last days of the vanished people on Easter Island. The most overused word on IMDB is "underrated," but RAPA NUI really was underrated and unappreciated: it's easily one of my ten favorite dramas of all time. The story was based on class conflict. Two suitors want a woman, one of the high-caste long ears (Jason Scott Lee), the other of the low-caste laborers that build the Moai, the giant stone heads that adorn the island, who compete for the love of a woman in the Bird-Man, a supreme triathlon that challenges JSL's hard, agile muscles.

The story is about the insane drive to build the Moai at all costs, and is easily the strongest performance of Esai Morales's career, his anger and rage palpable at an unjust society. The images from it stick with you: one of my favorites was Jason Scott Lee weeping as he clenched the very last tree left on the entire island to prevent it from being cut down.

Easter Island is a lonely place: no land anywhere for 1,000 miles, the inhabitants see only infinite ocean in every direction, with themselves as the only people on earth. The ecological theme speaks for itself, all the more frightening because it was something that actually happened.

One of the best Jason Scott Lee movies was Steven Summers's JUNGLE BOOK, which is easily the best A-list Tarzan movie ever. Yeah, I know it's about Mowgli, but c'mon. There was no "boy" anywhere here. The story had animal sidekicks, a wild man struggling with whether he was human or an animal, and lots of Tarzan-esque plot threads like wooing a beautiful English woman of society with competition from a handsome but douchey civilized suitor (here, it was Princess Bride's Cary Elywes at his absolute hammy best), and that most Tarzan-esque of all plots, the discovery of a lost city.

Most Asian actors only get "Asian-guy" parts, however, it's interesting to note that Jason Scott Lee played a Mexican (BORN IN EAST L.A.), a Polynesian (RAPA NUI), an Eskimo (MAP OF THE HUMAN HEART), an Indian (JUNGLE BOOK), a Hawaiian (LILO AND STICH, voice only). The only thing he has yet to play is a Swede, but then again he's not dead yet...