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Saturday 12 October 2013

Worst Supporting Actor 2003: Christopher Walken - Kangaroo Jack & Gigli

Christopher Walken is an Academy Award winner, but in 2003 he was taking part in films that are not quite good. It would matter, if his performances in them were as good, as you would expect from an Oscar holder. Were they? The answer is "no".
Both of Walken's performances are surprisingly dull. In Kangaroo Jack he plays a mob boss. (Funny thing is that Al Pacino also plays a mob boss in Gigli, for which he was also Razzie-nominated the same year.) That is a character that should induce some respect. Walken completely failed in that. In fact, it was the only purpose he was supposed to reach, because in this particular case his role didn't want him to do anything else. Really there is nothing else to play. Just induce some respect. It's sad when you're only purpose in the film is so much easy and you can't succeed in reaching that. And it's a shame when you're an Academy Award winner. So as for me, his nomination for Kangaroo Jack was deserving.
Let's take a look at his second nominated performance, which we can see in Gigli. It's a very similar case to Pacino - if we're talking about the screentime. Walken only has got a scene in Gigli. He plays a very weary cop that hardly cares about the resolution of his case. This performance of Walken is a bit better, because he at least showed how sick and tired of his work he is, He showed it well, but he became very dull. Some people were enjoying his performance (and maybe it's because they saw the entire film and it may really be one of the two best scenes of it), but I think it was nothing special. I would call it fine, yet boring.
So, to sum it up, Walken failed completely in one of his performances and in the other one he was nothing extraorinary. And both of the performances were extremely dul...

Wednesday 9 October 2013

Worst Supporting Actor 2003: Al Pacino - Gigli

First of all, a little confession of mine. I have never seen Gigli. Ergo, I have never seen it full. I've heard so many bad things about it that I just didn't have enough courage to actually watch it. So I just made myself sure that Pacino and Walken only play in one scene and I watched just their parts. Therefore my review(s) might not be good enough, because I haven't seen the performance in the context of the film, but in this case I don't think it will rule the objectivity.
Al Pacino is a living legend and undoubtably a great actor. I really didn't believe that his performance in Gigli will be bad, because I didn't believe he could ever be bad. Luckily, his reputation wasn't destroyed in my eyes after watching his really supporting performance as a mob boss in Gigli. From the first second we can see Pacino is really enjoying playing this character. Sometimes an actor needs to just chill out and take a role that isn't a challenge for him and that isn't very difficult to play.
And Pacino used this opportunity. I mean, he had nothing to lose. Of course he couldn't get an Oscar nomination for such role, but his performance really has nothing to do on the list of the five worst supporting performances of the year.
And back to the performance. The fact is that he is happy to be there and play this character. On the other hand, he is overacting many time, which is obvious. If an actor has a lots of fun playing the character, very probably will he be overacting. But his character didn't need to be acted with the best character acting.
Pacino loved to be on the screen in this role. And we really like watching him. That's all that matters...