Serial killers are the new black

22/09/2007

Posted by Andrea Hubert

When an actress hits a career slump, they either have a nervous breakdown or do one of those disturbing “forty and fabulous” Playboy centrefold shoots that everyone publicly applauds and privately uses as punishment wallpaper for naughty children, creating an entirely new meaning to the term “panic room”. But what about the actors whose careers have been rockier than Amy Winehouse’s nasal passages? Too old to play the brawny hero, too young to play the wise old mint-pushing granddad, and too white to be as cool as Samuel L Jackson. The answer? Bring on the serial killers.

Who, really, was Kevin Spacey before Seven? When we open a bottle of Chianti, whose face invariably pops up but Sir Anthony Hopkins? Sure, he was more funny than scary, but Christian Bale as Patrick Bateman turned the child star into a man. The perfect comeback, it’s an ageless, colour-blind role that pays dividends in both artistic merit and job satisfaction. Perhaps that’s the key to why Kevin Costner and Kurt Russell are so wildly convincing in two of the most searing performances either has ever given – Costner as the title character in Mr Brooks, and Russell as Stuntman Mike in Tarantino’s latest offering, Death Proof. On the one hand, you have an affable, nerdy type, Mr Brooks, who, when not winning accolades like Man of the Year, spends his free time embroiled in cold blooded, highly efficient murder. In bold contrast, Russell’s rather showier Stuntman Mike stalks groups of women before using them as human skittles with his car as the bowling ball of death.

Looking back at the roles that preceded, we have Costner as mentor to Ashton Kutcher’s Maverick-lite lifeguard in last year’s The Guardian, doing stunts an old man should never do, in a film with dialogue so painful, even a coma patient would wince. And if you were wondering what happened to the legend that was once Snake Plisskin, he was last seen in 2005 helping Dakota Fanning rescue a horse with a broken leg in Dreamer: Inspired by a True Story. If anyone was ever justified to play serial killing misogynists, it’s Costner and Russell. Most satisfying of all would be to get Mr Brooks and Stuntman Mike in the same room as all the unsatisfactory characters both of them have played over the years. Seeing that mulleted, American Robin Hood get a speeding car to the face would pretty much make my year.

Mr Brooks and Death Proof are both out in cinemas  now.