As the studio turned toward fantasies like "Harry Potter" and rebooted superheroes like Batman in "The Dark Knight," however, it lost interest in simple grit, and let "The Expendables" go to Nu Image and Millennium with Mr. Stallone, whose idea from the beginning was to make a throwback.
"THIEVES" An effort to make a throwback, sophisticated romantic comedy with action, this light-fingered (and mostly lightweight) hour stars John Stamos as a crack thief who falls afoul of a sexy counterpart with similar talents, played by the Australian actress Melissa George.
Because if there's one way to make a throwback film that little bit more twee, it's by making the characters sing some shitty songs.
"Blurred Lines" isn't the only breezy throwback track making a big impact this year.
Notre Dame can play that brand of football, too, which should make for a throwback championship contest.
But the inane writing makes Teddie a throwback to the birdbrained housewife character, even if she does have a career.
That heady mix of open-ended crimes and cops with complicated personal lives makes "Southland" a throwback, a tricky proposition in television today.
What he did know was Washington institutions, a trait that made him a throwback to the so-called wise men commanding respect across party lines.
Garland's focus on guilt versus innocence makes him a throwback, the kind of self-effacing public servant who believes that "the United States wins its point whenever justice is done its citizens in the courts," as an inscription outside the Justice Department office of the Attorney General says.
And while most of these throwbacks never made a splash with us across the pond, this one definitely tapped something in our tiny American pea-brains.
