War: the new date flick

As the swordwielding Captain Nathan Algren in The Last Samurai, Tom Cruise might be considered an archetypal Boy's Own hero.

But the fact that he spends much of the movie communing with his inner self while making eyes at the beautiful widow of a samurai warrior he killed in battle reveals another dimension entirely. And when he ultimately goes native and adopts the traditional Japanese dress (shades of David Beckham's sarong) the secret is out: Algren is a hero even women can warm to.

In other words, a caring, sharing, sensitive, vulnerable, sword-wielding warrior with a heart of undiluted goo.

The prospect of seeing Brad Pitt showing us his Achilles heel in the forthcoming Troy - a vulnerable hero if ever there was one - and manchild Leonardo DiCaprio as Alexander the Great before the year's end, suggests that Hollywood has finally wised up to the fact that the cartoon antics of the musclebound heroes in "war" films are well and truly over. This is the Age of the New Hero.

While it is true that women hate Arnold Schwarzenegger movies almost as much as westerns, it is patently obvious that they have no objections to mindless violence. Once considered the exclusive province of teenage boys, the violent warrior epic has undergone a sea-change of late.

Hollywood has wised up to the fact that girls want more than girlie movies. As films starring Alicia Silverstone and Reese Witherspoon start to drift away from their sophisticated target audience, it is clear that they will turn out in droves to see the next limb-hacking, bloodspurting, multiple-decapitation epics as long as the conditions are right. And the conditions are becoming more right by the day.

The key is in the hero, the boy wielding the sword or rif le. Hollywood executives have had to jettison their Arnie 'n' Sly Neanderthal strategy and replace it with more streamlined models such as Brad and Keanu, Leonardo and Tom.

Cartoon bulk gave way to the dangerous virility of Russell Crowe. It is a measure of Crowe's success that not only Gladiator but also the putatively Boy's Ownish Master and Commander has found equal favour with both sexes. Crowe's Captain Aubrey is not just a fearsome adversary, he also plays a mean viola below decks. Girls like their heroes manly and vulnerable.

While big-eyed Elijah Wood maintained his innocent warrior appeal throughout all three Lord of the Rings films, he was not The One who captivated the female audience. If there was any shred of doubt as to whom the little girls fancied in Lord of the Rings, one only had to hear the screams whenever Orlando Bloom's blond elf warrior Legolas loosed another quiverful of arrows at the dastardly Orcs. In a more serious vein, Jude Law's lost soul in Cold Mountain gives Anthony Minghella's movie a chance to gather the girls as he struggles to get back to the woman he loves while battling off all manner of obstacles.

The alternative Alexander the Great movie is also designed to appeal as much to girls as to boys. Oliver Stone's manly version stars all-purpose bad boy Colin Farrell as the Boy Emperor who is already carving his niche as an Irish hotthrob in Hollywood.