Role in the team: The Muscle The opposite of the Jack Burton fool type hero, the square jawed straight arrow, is a less common hero type amongst the Jacks of the big screen, Jacks tending more towards the offbeat or oddball. Jack Slater, the fictional even within his own movie star of Last Action Hero as played by Arnold Schwarzenegger, is a rare example, but is played for post-modern irony anyway. Speed's hero cop Jack Traven, however, fits the bill perfectly. Tailored to fit the largely one note talents of actor Keanu Reeves, Traven was initially written as a more traditional one-liner ready Jack character and is almost unique in being an occasion in which script doctor Joss Whedon was brought in to tone down the flippant quipping and play up the character's (and actor's) earnest decency. This SWAT team officer is impressively unfazed when faced with a mad bomber who is clearly smarter than he is. Traven is quite capable of throwing himself into the dynamic action man role, resolving problems physically rather than intellectually and, as the Jacks tend to do, getting the girl at the end.
