Tag Archives: Edward Norton

The Score (2001).

The stories were rampant at the time and bloody hell they were amusing: Brando refusing to be directed by Frank Oz for he moonlighted as a Muppet, Miss Piggy to be exact. The lionised thesp apparently took an instant dislike to the bloke, so Bobby De Niro had to take over directing duties, Brando fed instructions through an earpiece.

Frank Oz valiantly played Yoda through all of his incarnations, for fuck’s sake. Give him some slack, Marlon!

Anyway, it’s three generations of method maestros sharing the screen; sadly, none of them chew the scenery and you can just imagine what Michael Mann or someone of that caliber would have done with the material, even if the script is a bog-standard bag of cliches. 

A movie completely bereft of style, any Tom, Dick or Harry could have put this together, as it’s as visually nondescript and anonymous as a hundred TV movies from the past 30 years. Only this came out in cinemas and features three quite extraordinary actors.

It’s good enough, but 90 mins of the three of them having an unscripted conversation in a pub toilet would have been more engaging.

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American History X (1998). A modern tragedy.

Edward Norton was the last zeitgeist of the 20th century.

It sounds risible but it isn’t if you look at the body of work – he somehow captured everything, hit every nail. It was most likely by accident; that or he was incredibly good at choosing projects. He’s not really hit those heights since but the talent remains. He just needs a director to take a chance on him.

This is a sometimes horrifying movie and there are moments you almost have to skip. The film is biblical in its capturing of the transitory nature of happiness. These very real characters are stuck there with no escape. But they have a few wee happy moments. A few. It’s a long time since 1998 but not really, in the sense that someone said to me the Berlin Wall has been down longer than it had been up. You couldn’t make a movie these days with Ed Norton emerging from a cathartic shower with a Big Bertha-sized swastika on his chest. Today, this narrative would have the compulsory strong-willed female, a disabled character, obvious life lessons, and a happy ending. Cinema today is essentially and only social politics.

Derek Vinyard is the pre-eminent example of charismatic authority – everything he says at the dinner table is incorrect but he captivates through the intensity of the delivery. Bloody hell, who got Best Actor (when the Oscars were relevant) over this lad?! I think it was that exasperating Italian bloke who thankfully disappeared from cinema after his Academy Award.

And what the fuck was happening with the director calling himself ‘Humpty Dumpty’? My research is limited.

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