Why Detective Stephen Morse From Intrusion Looks So Familar

A home invasion thriller is a reliably entertaining way to spend a couple of hours on the edge of your seat, and if you're a fan of such movies, Netflix's latest addition to the genre, director Adam Salky's "Intrusion," is well worth checking out. The movie tells the story of Meera (Freida Pinto) and Henry (Logan Marshall-Green), a young couple who move in a house Henry designed — but things soon take a dramatic turn in the shape of more than one home invasion. Of course, the ending of "Intrusion" has its own surprises in store, as well. 

Movies like this tend to hold a pretty tight focus on the main characters, but for a story like "Intrusion," a strong supporting cast is essential to keep things ticking along. One of the most prominent supporting characters in the film is Detective Stephen Morse, and as luck would have it, the actor playing him has ample experience in this particular type of role. In fact, you might very well have seen him before. 

Robert John Burke has been appearing in movies and TV shows since 1981, often as military officers, agents, cops and other authority figures. In 1993, he got the chance to play arguably the toughest police officer in movie history — Alex "RoboCop" Murphy himself. 

The original "RoboCop" is arguably the most 1980s sci-fi movie out there, as well as a stone cold classic. Unfortunately, by the time Burke took over from original RoboCop actor, Peter Weller, the brutal and dystopian series had turned into a family-friendly affair in which RoboCop fought cyber-ninjas and flew around with a jetpack. As such, critics didn't particularly care for "RoboCop 3," as its 6 percent Tomatometer and 15 percent Audience Score on Rotten Tomatoes readily prove. Still, at the end of the day, Burke can count himself among the very few actors who have donned the iconic RoboCop suit onscreen, and even if his particular corner of the franchise isn't the most esteemed one, that's not a bad accomplishment at all. 

Robert John Burke is a man of many notable TV roles. He's played Bart Bass in "Gossip Girl," General Clarke in "Army Wives," Patrick Simmons in "Person of Interest," Ed Tucker in "Law & Order: SVU," and many other prominent figures in equally prominent series. Going by sheer episode count, though, his most major TV role has been in the FX firefighter drama "Rescue Me." 

Burke plays Mickey Gavin, an important recurring character who's technically the Gavin family's "black sheep" — but only in the sense that he's not a firefighter or law enforcement officer like the rest of the family's men. In reality, Mick is much closer to a white sheep, being a priest and his troubled cousin Tommy's (Denis Leary) AA sponsor. Unfortunately, his role as his cousin's confidant takes a heavy toll on him over the course of the series, and he ends up falling from grace in more ways than one. 

While Spike Lee's excellent 2018 movie "BlacKkKlansman" may not have won the Academy Award for Best Picture, it did get a deserved Oscar for its screenplay. The movie tells the story of Ron Stallworth (John David Washington), a Black police detective who infiltrates the Ku Klux Klan with his telephone correspondence with its high-ranking members, while his colleague Flip Zimmerman (Adam Driver) impersonates him in face-to-face meetings with Klan leaders. 

In true Lee fashion, the cast of "BlacKkKlansman" is full of quality actors — including none other than Robert John Burke. The actor plays Chief Bridges, the top dog at the Colorado Springs Police Department, and the man who supervises Stallworth's investigation. Though he's a gruff older guy who definitely echoes some of the era's unsavory attitudes toward things like civil rights, Bridges turns out to be a surprisingly fair leader. As such, Burke gets to play a stern, yet largely supportive character in a movie that generally doesn't exactly show the police in the greatest light.