“The Italian Job”
It wasn’t irregular in the ’90s for actors to sign multiple-picture deals with major studios. What was surprising was that Paramount Pictures not only wanted to take a gamble by casting a then-unknown 25-year-old Norton in “Primal Fear” – they also wanted to lock him into a three-picture deal. Obviously, Norton has never been an actor who is just looking for a payday. He’s also not necessarily known as an easy guy to work with. After turning down an offer to produce Spike Lee’s “25th Hour,” the studio decided instead to offer him a villainous role in the F. Gary Gray-directed remake of “The Italian Job.” Far from the type of film the two-time Academy Award nominee wanted to spend months of his life filming, Norton pushed back until he had no choice but to begrudgingly accept the part. What came as a result of the friction was, surprisingly, of Norton’s most entertaining bad guy parts. Norton has never been an actor known for phoning it in, so he even at his most disinterested, he manages to deliver an effortless turn as the calculating, back-stabbing member of a heist crew who imbues each pulpy line with a healthy degree of smarm. Some of the best actors can show up and elevate middlebrow material by virtue of their presence, and while “The Italian Job” is a cut above most 2000s-era action thrillers, Norton still blesses this serviceable remake with a healthy dose of genuine menace and coy self-awareness. – MR
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vrNryKVm5Yw
“Down in the Valley”
A throwback to the sort of morally ambiguous ’70s character dramas that we rarely see today, director David Jacobson’s neo-western “Down in the Valley” now feels like a relic of a time when risky indies could still get financed off a reputable actor’s passionate backing. Here, Norton plays Harlan: a lonely, delusional cowboy drifting through the San Fernando Valley who becomes romantically involved with an 18-year-old girl he meets at the beach (Evan Rachel Wood).The film’s unique take on a familiar story (the parallels to “Taxi Driver” are unmistakable) made it feel more unpredictable than its indie contemporaries, largely because of Norton’s totally committed and empathetic performance. Norton modulates the character’s unbalanced darkness and leans into Harlan’s boyish naiveté. By imbuing the character’s optimism with the slightest tinge of desperation, Harlan becomes a much more complicated and sympathetic character. What separates this turn from being just another unhinged DeNiro-lite performance is Norton’s dedication to the character’s affability. He doesn’t show us a tortured soul on the brink of insanity – he shows us a man lost in a world that has no interest in helping him (it’s the opposite of what Todd Phillips and Joaquin Phoenix bring to their current “Taxi Driver”-inspired psychopath). Norton refuses to let his character to fall prey to tics and ambiguously defined psychological disorders. It’s the actor’s most underrated performance: a tender, complex portrait of masculinity run amok. – MR
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3AEaa0bMyFY
“Leaves of Grass”
Tim Blake Nelson’s goofball pothead comedy “Leaves of Grass” is a film that leaves the viewer feeling slightly stoned. It’s a pleasurable, undeniably weird experience, and one that could easily be forgotten the next day. Still, if “Leaves of Grass” is memorable for one gimmick that no other film can lay claim to, it’s the spectacle of seeing Edward Norton play identical fraternal twins. In Nelson’s sweet, silly film (which is a far cry from the actor’s other directorial efforts, including the vivid Shakespeare adaptation “O” and the rattling Holocaust drama “The Grey Zone”), Norton plays Bill and Brady Kincaid: respectively, a prim philosophy professor and his pot-harvesting fuck-up of a brother who fakes his own death as a means of reuniting with his sibling. Nelson’s directorial touch is enviably light, and he has a fine way with actors, including Richard Dreyfuss as an Oklahoma marijuana kingpin, and Keri Russell as a soft-spoken poet who takes a liking to the more presentable Kincaid brother. Watching Norton play in these two registers is a hoot: he’s almost cartoonishly priggish as Bill, amplifying the square-peg tics he leans in to in films like “Keeping the Faith” and “Moonrise Kingdom.” Brady, meanwhile, is a truly ridiculous comic creation, and a familiar variation on the loser cut-up we all know who’s just a little too enamored with his own hare-brained ideas. “Leaves of Grass” isn’t much more than a passable oddball comedy of small-town tomfoolery, but it’s not every film where Norton gives us two comic performances for the ages. – NL
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6q5a0W2pxS8
“Moonrise Kingdom”
While the two star-crossed adolescent lovebirds at the center Wes Anderson’s “Moonrise Kingdom” are fueled by the power of their youthful dreams, most of the adults in this colorful romantic picaresque are depressed or screwed-up in one way or another. Part of what makes Norton’s performance in “Moonrise” so surprising is how unflappably positive and upbeat his character is, at least on his squeaky-clean surface. Scout Master Randy Ward, like the writer/director who created him, is a plainspoken perfectionist who values order and precision above all else. When one of Ward’s Khaki Scouts, a bespectacled outcast named Sam Shakusky (Jared Gilman), goes missing, the Scout Master is practically beside himself. Norton conveys the character’s mission – to bring the boy home, at all costs – with an admirable lack of irony that is all the more unusual considering that Wes Anderson often traffics in a carefully calibrated blend of irony and sincerity. Norton acquits himself to Anderson’s poetically heightened make-believe universe with ease, which probably explains why the actor has become part of the director’s ever-expanding repertory company (Norton would go on to play a forlorn fascist in “The Grand Budapest Hotel” and a sad-sack canine in last year’s “Isle of Dogs”). This is an unabashedly poker-faced performance, with Norton making a meal out of Anderson’s unmistakable period dialogue (“Jiminy Cricket, he flew the coop!”) without any hint of mockery. Here, Norton is as square, dorky and good-hearted as Fred Rogers: it’s a charming register that remains a far cry from the tortured characters Norton has played in the past. – NL
“Birdman”
After spending the late ’90s and early 2000s as one of the most in-demand actors of his generation, Norton did what almost every leading man is asking to do in Hollywood today: he signed on to play a superhero for Marvel Studios. Taking on the titular role of “The Incredible Hulk” after Ang Lee’s misunderstood interpretation failed to kickstart a franchise, Norton’s film was a more financially successful take, but one still mired by behind-the-scenes drama. In fact, Norton was said to have been so hands-on with the material that he attempted to just direct the film itself (both on set and in the editing room). Flash forward six years later and Marvel Studios is the biggest cultural juggernaut in the film industry and Mark Ruffalo is the third incarnation of the Hulk. Nobody could have predicted that Alejandro González Iñárritu, a Mexican director known for his hard-hitting, bleak realist dramas, would turn in one of the funniest, most bonkers movies of the decade with his Best Picture winner “Birdman.” Similarly unpredictable was that “Birdman” served as a career resurgence not only for star Michael Keaton but for Norton as well. In a knowingly meta touch, Iñárritu cast Norton as a self-serious actor with a reputation for ruffling feathers. As a pretentious stage vet brought in to lend the play at the film’s center a degree of prestige, Norton’s Mike is the pitch-perfect antagonist for Keaton’s struggling protagonist. Norton embodied the undeniably talented, reprehensibly smug actor with an acute self-awareness that acted as something of an apology for his past behavior. How much of that is indebted to Iñárritu’s casting and Norton’s performance is up for debate, but it’s still one of the actor’s funniest and most lacerating performances to date. – MR
“Motherless Brooklyn”
“Motherless Brooklyn” is a film that’s been kicked around in development limbo since the early 2000s, and considering the irreverent nature of the source material, it’s totally understandable why a studio like Warner Bros. would be slightly hesitant to take a chance on the wackadoodle vision of author Jonathan Lethem. Lethem’s novel is a bizarre postmodern noir about a wily, New York-based private detective named Lionel Essrog (played by Norton, also acting as writer and director) who suffers from Tourette’s Syndrome. Norton has made a number of changes to Lethem’s book: “Motherless Brooklyn” the novel is a more or less contemporary detective story, while Norton’s adaptation is set during the 1950s, thus underlining the comparisons to Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett. There was always going to be some… questions about how an actor like Norton would embody this afflicted character, and to be sure, his interpretation of Essrog is as twitchy, and as laden with tics as the characters he played in “Primal Fear” and “The Score.” Where Norton really shines in “Motherless Brooklyn” are the moments where the actor gets to convey the character’s bruised vulnerability: Lionel, like all great noir heroes, is both empathetic to the plight of the ghost-like denizens inhabiting a city that’s dead-set on leaving them behind, and also sensitive to the abuses of power committed by men like Moses Randolph (Alec Baldwin, playing the film’s heavy with a concentrated abundance of his trademark fury). Norton commits to the character’s childlike earnestness wholeheartedly, and while his performance in “Motherless Brooklyn” definitely won’t be to everyone’s taste, there’s no doubting he goes all-in in a tricky role. – NL
Honorable Mention
Norton may have taken a backseat to Robert De Niro and Marlon Brando’s final role in Frank Oz’s “The Score,” but he still managed to go toe to toe with the two veteran actors in an otherwise perfunctory thriller. The actor’s milquetoast comedic persona is on full display in the Danny DeVito-directed black comedy “Death to Smoochy,” where Norton plays the only semi-decent person in a very niche landscape (the world of children’s television) populated almost exclusively by assholes and egomaniacs.
Norton is an appealing enough romantic lead in his directorial debut “Keeping the Faith,” in which he plays a priest competing with his rabbi pal (played by Ben Stiller) for the affections of their childhood friend. He made a stirring impression two years later in the handsome biopic “Frida,” in which he enjoys a relatively small but nevertheless rich part as Nelson Rockefeller. Norton would embody yet another renowned real-life figure (Baldwin, the former King of Jerusalem) in Ridley Scott’s epic “Kingdom of Heaven” before going on to play a tormented magician in the Neil Burger-directed period mystery “The Illusionist.” We should also mention that Norton is quite good in “Red Dragon,” where he generously cedes most of the film’s juicier moments to co-star Anthony Hopkins (playing Hannibal Lecter for the third time).
In 2008 and 2010, Norton would turn in a hair of rough, hard-hitting performances that hearkened back to his muscular work in “American History X.” He believably played a street-hardened career cop in the roughneck drama “Pride and Glory,” directed by Gavin O’ Connor (“Warrior,” “The Accountant”). Two years later, Norton lent his talents to the role of volatile convict “Stone” Creeson in the John Curran-helmed prison drama that shares its name with its unfortunately cornrowed Caucasian protagonist.
In the ensuing years, Norton went on to form a creative partnership of sorts with writer/director Wes Anderson, appearing in “Moonrise Kingdom” (on this list), as well as “The Grand Budapest Hotel,” where he played a fanciful imperialist bound to Ralph Fiennes’ dandy protagonist through an encounter from childhood, and also “Isle of Dogs,” where he voiced Rex: a sad-eyed pup who yearns for nights spent by the fireside with his loyal master. He’s also damn good as the ruthless CIA villain in Tony Gilroy‘s “The Bourne Legacy,” and while people are iffy on that film, Norton was born to play within the high octane and cerebral world of Tony Gilroy, so here’s to hoping they collaborate again. And of course, there’s “The Incredible Hulk,” which he’s not bad in, but it’s a mixed bag of a movie.
Earlier this year, Norton enjoyed a part in Robert Rodriguez’s action-adventure extravaganza “Alita: Battle Angel,” although the role ultimately amounted to little more than a glorified cameo. Regardless of the scant amount of screen time he was afforded in Rodriguez’s CGI-enhanced sci-fi bonanza, Norton nevertheless managed to make an impression – because that’s what a great actor does.
“Motherless Brooklyn” opens on November 1.
