The Great Gatsby (2013)

rating: ***

the story: Nick Carraway becomes swept up in the epic life of Jay Gatsby.

review: Leonardo DiCaprio has frequently been a brilliant actor.  Not always.  And it's always strange to discover the exceptions.  The Great Gatsby is one of them.

Baz Luhrmann does the Moulin Rouge version of the F. Scott Fitzgerald classic, and Spider-Man, I mean Tobey Maguire, is our host.  Maguire's casting, and performance, in the film is one of the textbook examples of failing to escape a well-known role.  Maguire had a career as someone other than Spider-Man, before he put on the spandex, but then he did and now, because he's an actor of limited range, it's going to be hard to see him as anything but Spider-Man.  And I find it difficult to believe that Lurhmann didn't on some level comprehend that.  Maguire has voiceover work in his Spider-Man movies, too, so it's even harder to understand.  He plays Carraway as the same Peter Parker dork persona, and Luhrmann dresses him as the same Peter Parker dork persona. 

And then in strolls DiCaprio, and by now it's clear that he's developed a worn-in face, but the voice, if he isn't careful, is that of a child actor who...just has a career that's inexplicably continued.  And that's Leo DiCaprio if he hasn't bothered to sculpt a performance.  And that's his Gatsby.  Anytime he opens his mouth, it's just Jack from Titanic in an alternate reality.  Which I suppose was half the point of casting DiCaprio in the role.

Carey Mulligan is Daisy Buchanan.  Mulligan was the It Girl at the time, but displays little reason for being It in the role.  Isla Fisher has a thankless tiny supporting role (as she tends to have), and Jason Clarke is in it, too.

The real reason, the only reason to watch this version of The Great Gatsby is Joel Edgerton's Tom Buchanan, is Joel Edgerton.  Following his Hollywood breakthrough performance in Warrior (2011), The Great Gatsby was Edgerton's first real chance to shine, and he obviously threw himself at the opportunity.  His even better performance in Exodus: Gods and Kings (2014), I suspect, has something to do with this one.  Edgerton's somewhat blank face has always been his biggest drawback, but his voice and his sheer acting talent, when he's been allowed to shine, are undeniably huge assets.  He clearly seized this opportunity.  He's the only one in the movie who simultaneously loses himself in the time period and dominates the screen every time he appears.  Some would call it overacting, or simply dismiss him as a ham.  Those I would call clueless idiots.  In another era, he would've instantly become a huge star.  In this one he's settled back into a fairly anonymous career in the years since. 

So the Jay Gatsby of this version?  Is its Tom Buchanan.

Gringo (2018)

rating: ****

the story: A ruthless company attempts to use one of its most loyal employees as a patsy in Mexico.

review: When I saw the trailer for Gringo, I thought it looked like a delightful farce.  I was interested in it anyway, as it starred Charlize Theron and Joel Edgerton, two of my favorite modern actors.  But more intriguing, from the trailer, was David Oyelowo, the would-be patsy whose reactions were hilariously over-the-top to the chaos happening around him.

And that's what you get the movie itself, too, and that's more than satisfying.  The best part is that it casts Oyelowo in an entirely new light, for me.  I was previously exposed to him only, as far as I know, in Selma, where I thought he was horribly miscast as Martin Luther King, Jr., and as a result I didn't think much of him as an actor in general.  But Gringo proves me wrong.  Selma's problems don't seem to have been Oyelowo's problems at all, its creative shortcomings a result of the creative process.  Gringo is what the creative process working the right way looks like.

At heart it's a massive criticism of how greedy the business sector continues to be, long after the supposed "greed decade" of the '80s.  Theron and Edgerton (whose brother Nash directed the movie) play the business colleagues trying to save their own skins at Oyelowo's expense.  Edgerton famously has a passive face, expressionless, and I think it held him back early in his career, but he's managed to work around it thanks to his considerable acting chops (best exemplified, I think, in Warrior and Exodus: Gods and Kings), to the point where he can guide his own career now.  His ruthless businessman in Gringo in particular uses his peculiar screen presence to full advantage, that passive face playing into is callousness as he tries to have his cake and eat it, too, backstabbing the haplessly loyal and trusting Oyelowo (until Oyelowo realizes that he's been had and turns the tables on him).

Sharlto Copley, who moreso than director Neill Blomkamp managed to parlay District 9 into a fascinating career, plays Edgerton and Theron's muscle who ends up siding with Oyelowo, and is another great presence in the movie.  There's also Thandie Newton (can't believe she was ever allowed to vanish from the forefront), Amanda Seyfried, and Alan Ruck in supporting roles.

Gringo is a movie I think could very easily settle into a cult favorite, and a career highlight for a number of its actors, especially Oyelowo.