Brad Pitt is an undeniable movie star. But is he a great actor? angelicabastien ranked every one of his movies
Brad Pitt is an undeniable movie star. But is he a great actor? Photo-Illustration: Vulture and Courtesy of Studios Brad Pitt is undeniably a great movie star. He has an enviable coolness that snakes through his work onscreen, most recently used to great effect in Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. He’s the kind of movie star that has become increasingly rare — larger than life, assured, contradictory, physically mesmerizing, with a strong understanding of the power of persona.
44. Happy Together Happy Together is a mostly forgettable romantic comedy in which Pitt plays the extremely small role of Brian, a college student seen at parties and in lead Patrick Dempsey’s acting class. It’s too slight a role to be memorable, and it doesn’t ask much of Pitt either. 40. Johnny Suede .youtube[data-uri="www.vulture.com/_components/youtube/instances/ck5d1kxk2004j3g67uvlyp8ud@published"].border-top:before { content: 'Watch'; } I can’t fully put my finger on what this Tom DiCillo–directed independent film or Pitt’s performance as aspiring musician Johnny Suede is going for. Whatever it is, it doesn’t work.
36. The Devil’s Own The Devil’s Own is a muddled bore of a film in which Pitt plays a member of the Irish Republican Army who goes undercover in America to buy missiles he hopes will aid his cause. Pitt has never been a transformative actor in the modern sense, where we equate Good Acting with weight lost and gained, difficult accents, and de-glamorizing. His best work often is in more nuanced explorations of the calm, fully Americana persona he’s constructed. The Devil’s Own isn’t one of them.
32. Snatch Having to watch Guy Ritchie’s interminable, testosterone-heavy crime comedy was a test of my patience. Pitt is clearly having fun playing Mickey, an Irish Traveller and bare-knuckle boxing one-punch champion. But the film’s running joke about not understanding his accent wears thin, quickly. Luckily, he has a spunkiness that offsets things, at least in a few moments — but not enough of them.
28. Interview With the Vampire In the Neil Jordan-directed Anne Rice adaptation, Pitt struggles to convey the regality of his character Louis, a member of the undead sired by Lestat . Pitt’s movements come across as stiff, particularly in exposition-filled scenes involving Christian Slater. He’s just trying too hard to capture the slinky malevolence of the vampire and comes across too studied as a result.
24. Thelma & Louise What is the alchemy behind a star-making turn? Charisma, of course. Timing, definitely. But perhaps most importantly, a sense of contradiction that audiences are drawn to and want to solve. For Pitt, once he found his standing as an actor, moving beyond the stilted performances of his early years, the contradiction lies in how his sunny good looks hide the remoteness in his characters.
20. A River Runs Through It .youtube[data-uri="www.vulture.com/_components/youtube/instances/ck5d1a86j003f3g67pwsjrtnh@published"].
16. Killing Them Softly Trying to find the truth of a performance is sometimes exceedingly difficult when the work is so subtle. In Killing Them Softly — Andrew Dominik’s machismo–heavy, sweat–drenched noir set against the backdrop of the financial crisis and presidential campaign of 2008 — the truth of Brad Pitt’s performance as mob enforcer Jackie is in his gaze. For most of the film, Jackie is seen talking in rundown bars, empty restaurants, corner diners, the passenger seat of cars.
12. Inglourious Basterds In this collaboration with Quentin Tarantino, Pitt doesn’t play a character so much as a broad, larger-than-life caricature. While he only plays a few notes, he hits them so beautifully and with such force you can’t help but be dazzled. Lt. Aldo Raine is a downhome boy from Tennessee, complete with an arch southern accent, who chomps down words with derangement.
9. Kalifornia Dominic Sena’s 1993 thriller Kalifornia, contains one of Pitt’s greatest physical performances. The plot: Brian Kessler is a writer working on a book about serials killers with his forthright photographer girlfriend Carrie ; he has plans to road trip across the country, visiting various infamous murder sites, before relocating to California. Brian advertises a ride share whose only respondents are Early Grayce , a chaotic psychopath killer, and his naïve girlfriend, Adele .
Rewatching Fincher’s second collaboration with Pitt, Fight Club, I was surprised by just how many moments of back-ting there were, the most mesmerizing of which occurs in an early scene, when the eponymous club is just starting to gain traction. Tyler Durden is simply walking through a bar to the tune of “Going Out West” by Tom Waits.
4. The Tree of Life Terrence Malick’s lyrical drama Tree of Life — undoubtedly one of Pitt’s most finely wrought performances — asks the actor to channel a specific brand of mid-century white masculinity: stern, focused, controlling, and bubbling with misplaced rage. Pitt obliges with eloquent precision. He has an immense understanding of the character. Listen to the ferocity in his voice as he yells “Hit me” to one of his sons with an unblinking gaze.
Pitt knows that Cliff Booth is a complicated man. His outwardly chill demeanor belies a pool of anger, clear in the film’s end but also hinted at earlier on, in a controversial scene with his wife. I keep coming back to this performance, hoping to decipher what is so effective. But this is the power of a movie star: to heighten the mundane — walking across an empty lot, macaroni and cheese from the box in your small trailer, smoking a cigarette — into something of elegant, mythic beauty.
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