Over the past 40 years, it seems like the biggest stars of WWE end up becoming movie stars, as John Cena, The Rock, Hulk Hogan, and even Batista have taken some well-known starring turns. Despite being arguably the top star of the Attitude Era, Stone Cold Steve Austin’s acting career is a little more under-the-radar, having started in 1999 with a recurring role on TV’s Nash Bridges before making the jump to features.
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Ignoring movies where he makes a cameo as himself, Steve Austin has starred in 13 different movies since 2005 including both theatrical and direct-to-video/streaming. Let’s look at every single one of them, starting with the worst one.
13 Chain of Command (2015)
Michael Jai White takes the lead in Chain of Command as a soldier whose quest to find his brother’s killer leads to your run-of-the-mill conspiracy that goes to the very top. Steve Austin doesn’t play the guy at the very top, but he is a hitman hired to permanently silence White’s character. This is one of those flicks that’s considered poor even for connoisseurs of DTV action fare, with poor writing, cinematography, and no fight between White and Austin.
12 The Stranger (2010)
NOT based on the novel by Albert Camus, The Stranger stars Steve Austin as the stranger in question, an amnesiac/elite agent who must figure out his true identity while evading both the FBI and the Russian mafia. While certainly a step up from Chain of Command, The Stranger basically amounts to a low-rent Bourne Identity, with many viewers criticizing the movie for its overuse of needless flashback sequences.
11 Tactical Force (2011)
Canadian action romp Tactical Force features the first collabo between Steve Austin and Michael Jai White, with the two starring as members of a maverick SWAT team whose wild approach to law enforcement gets them sent on a mandatory training exercise. Of course, they end up encountering real bad guys and have to fight for their lives.
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While not the most original premise, Tactical Force proves a pretty fun DTV fare, with over-the-top action and goofy one-liners abound.
10 Born To Fight (a.k.a. Knockout) (2011)
This may come as a surprise, but not every Steve Austin movie is a straight-to-video action movie. On the contrary Born To Fight is a straight-to-video sports drama, with Stone Cold playing a retired boxer who must address his violent past while training a troubled teenager in the pugilistic arts. If there’s one thing to get out of this take on Karate Kid type coming of age films, it’s that it’s weird to see Steve Austin with different facial hair.
9 Grown Ups 2 (2013)
Steve Austin plays a guy named Tom or Tommy a surprising number of times in his filmography (at least four), and in Grown Ups 2 he plays Tommy Cavanaugh, a childhood bully of Adam Sandler’s protagonist Lenny. Given that Grown Ups 2 is an $80 million Hollywood comedy and most of Austin’s oeuvre is composed of low-budget action flicks, it feels like a tough film to rank. In the end, however, Grown Ups 2 was almost universally panned by critics while many of Austin’s other films are pretty serviceable for what they aspire to be.
8 Maximum Conviction (2012)
Frequent Steven Seagal collaborator Keoni Waxman directs Maximum Conviction, which one can safely guess takes place in a prison. Steves Austin and Seagal play ex-black ops guys who are in charge of decommissioning an old prison when mercenaries lay siege upon the place in order to obtain two very important female prisoners. It’s an action-packed, fast-paced riff on Die Hard, and Austin pulls off some wacky kills with improvised weapons.
7 The Package (2013)
Steve Austin has shared the screen with a number of action film stars, and in The Package he stars opposite Dolph Lundgren as a courier for the mob tasked with delivering a mysterious package to Lungren’s character, a crime boss known only as “The German.”
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While nothing particularly groundbreaking, The Package may be of particular interest to action movie fans as the screenplay is credited to Derek Kolstad, writer of the John Wick films -- featuring Kevin Nash, for extra wrestling relevance -- and Austin’s character is named Tommy Wick.
6 Recoil (2011)
Part of the fun of modern DTV films is seeing just which marketable action stars get thrown together, and 2011’s Recoil pairs Steve Austin and Danny Trejo. This by-the-numbers riff on The Punisher stars Austin as a vengeful ex-cop with a murdered family who’s out to kill not only the perpetrators, but also any other criminals he meets along the way. His quest brings him to a small town that he must liberate from by a biker gang led by Trejo’s character, giving the film some Sons of Anarchy vibes.
5 Hunt To Kill (2010)
Three years before the two teamed for Maximum Conviction, director Keoni Waxman directed Steve Austin in Hunt To Kill, a forest-based actioner that also features Eric Roberts in a small role. In this one, Austin is a former Border Patrol agent who’s taken to living in the mountains in Montana when some fugitives kidnap his daughter, forcing him to use the terrain against the bad guys, Rambo style. It’s silly stuff, but a must to see Austin pop a wheelie on an ATV.
4 Damage (2009)
In his follow-up to The Condemned, Steve Austin stars as an ex-con who seeks to raise money to fund heart surgery for the daughter of the man he killed, which means entering the world of underground bare knuckle fighting. In other words, it’s exactly the kind of Steve Austin movie fans might want to see.
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Aside from seeing Austin in a fighting movie, the other big attraction here is Walton Goggins of Justified and The Shield as a lovable lowlife fight promoter.
3 The Condemned (2007)
Steve Austin’s highest profile starring role was also his first and, somewhat ironically, the only one produced by WWE. In The Condemned, Austin plays one of a group of death row inmates forced to kill one another as part of a Hunger Games style TV competition show, with the winner earning their freedom. Also featuring Vinnie Jones and fellow wrestler turned actor Nathan Jones, The Condemned isn’t transcendent, but it is the kind of straightforward action movie that exceeds expectations.
2 The Longest Yard (2005)
A remake of the 1974 Burt Reynolds flick, The Longest Yard is Steve Austin’s film debut, with the “Texas Rattlesnake” playing a surprising role, given his in-ring character: a prison guard on the team opposing Adam Sandler’s team of football playing convicts. In fact, there are a number of wrestlers in this movie, including Great Khali, Goldberg, former IWGP Heavyweight Champion Bob Sapp, and Kevin Nash. The Longest Yard doesn’t have the bite of the acclaimed original, but manages to acquit itself just fine as an amusing diversion.
1 The Expendables (2010)
Given that most of Austin’s filmography is action films, it’s only appropriate that his best film is the maximalist version of his other films: Sylvester Stallone’s The Expendables, wherein nearly every major action movie star imaginable makes at least a cameo appearance. Austin’s role is that of one of the henchmen of Eric Roberts’ lead villain, and even gets his own fight scene, taking on multi-time UFC champion Randy Couture. The Expendables didn’t quite hit expectations like it should have, but the team-up aspect of it makes it worth a watch regardless.
