2. Ben Richards - The Running Man (1987)
With The Hunger Games: Catching Fire coming to cinemas soon, it's invariably important to remember that Arnie's Running Man used effectively the same story, only with a Simon Cowell like villain and some of the finest corny quips ever to grace the action genre. Coming at the height of Arnie's late '80s/early '90s heyday, the oddly prescient film was based on a story by Stephen King, and cast the hulking actor as Ben Richards, yet another falsely-convicted man who isn't so much given his opportunity to clear his name as he is to bring down the ugly animal of grotesque populist culture in the shape of Damon Killian's The Running Man TV show. The premise is genius, pitting a wounded animal Arnie against a colourful rogues gallery featuring wonderfully silly villains like Dynamo, Buzzsaw, Captain Freedom and Subzero, and gives him an important role as the focal point for a resistance, lead unfeasibly by Mick Fleetwood, apparently playing a version of himself. Arnie might not have been happy with director Paul Michael Glazer's work (otherwise known as Starsky,) but the film remains a genuine classic of the period