It’s Time to Stop Casting Character Actors Notorious for Their Shady Roles… in Shady Roles!
Anyone who has watched their share of crime procedurals on television knows the old rule: if the detectives have a pool of murder suspects, it’s almost always the most recognizable guest star of the week. Serialized crime shows from Law and Order to Psych have all been guilty of this. When presented with an array of potential killers, the guilty party is always the ‘Oh hey, it’s that guy!’ actor.This is not an overly-critical complaint, mind you. In the magical land of Whodunnit, someone has to have done it. And if you’ve got a decently recognizable guest star then why not use them to their full potential? Besides, I imagine the majority of viewers lack the embarrassing level of encyclopedic knowledge of actors that a few of us have, so for them, the shock of a surprise reveal may still land.
What I really have a problem with is using actors who have been typecast into notoriously untrustworthy roles.
This trend displayed a one-two punch in the latest Dwayne Johnson action flick, Skyscraper, which featured not one but two ‘surprise’ betrayals that I’m sure absolutely no one saw coming.
The Rock plays Will Sawyer, a former SWAT officer who retired after a tragic standoff which left him without half of one of his legs. Now married with young twins, Will works in securities and is coaxed by a former coworker to inspect a Chinese billionaire’s fictional Hong Kong skyscraper, The Pearl, the largest one ever built, in the hopes of housing residents in its state of the art upper floors.
Everything seems to be going well until it is revealed that Will’s friend, Ben, is working for terrorists who need Will’s security access to take over the Pearl’s functions. Will and his former coworker are presented as having a warm but estranged relationship. By Ben’s visible scars, you may reasonably assume that he was present at the failed SWAT raid with Will a decade earlier and thus has bonded with our hero through an unspeakable tragedy.
Ben’s betrayal may have surprised me if he hadn’t been played by this guy:
I’ll admit I’m a bit biased. While I am not 100% familiar with Pablo Schreiber’s repertoire, I’ve seen enough to know this guy almost never plays characters who are remotely trustworthy. The moment he showed up on screen, I leaned over to my friend and whispered, “Well you definitely can’t trust that guy.” When the actor responsible for the second betrayal showed up minutes later I said, “You can’t trust him either!” and I was not the least bit surprised to be right on both accounts.
Some might say I am overthinking a cheesy summer action flick that is essentially a Die Hard wannabe… and I totally am.
But these summer blockbusters could at least be a little less predictable if only they put a little more thought into casting. Unless they just live for playing skeevy jerks, I don’t even think the actors in question love being typecast. I mean, maybe the Pablo Schreibers and the Ben Mendelsohns and the Eric Balfours of the world are perfectly happy bagging paychecks playing to type, but audiences must be getting a little tired of it by now. At this point, the only thing that would surprise me is if these guys played characters that really were on the level.
Now, I’m willing to give these guys the benefit of the doubt and assume that they are decent people in real life (except for Jeremy Piven… That guy might actually be as bad as the jerks he plays). By this logic, one can assume they possess a modicum of acting ability, so perhaps they just have really bad agents, but it is 2018 and I think we can do better than casting the same guys in the same old roles. At the very least, one of the traitorous characters in Skyscraper could have been the comedic sidekick who gets their farcical moment of glory during the climax. These movies love that kind of thing. Maybe Skyscraper thought it could get away without that character archetype by casting Dwayne Johnson, who excels at both comedy and action, but I think the comedy could have been more effective if Johnson hadn’t been asked to pull double duty.
Predictability was a shortcoming Skyscraper was unable to resist from the start, however. Some really obvious foreshadowing about where the final fight would take place coupled with a lame joke setup about how to fix a computer led to some pretty groan-inducing climactic scenes. That said, the movie is still enjoyable for what it is: a brainless summer action-comedy with good guys and bad guys and a clear line down the middle. Skyscraper covers all the familiar bases; you won’t remember this movie five years from now, but for the two hours you’re watching it, it’s a great way to escape all this summer heat.
