“The ‘Dark Knight’ Trilogy”
From the late ’90s to the early 2000s, the “Batman” franchise seemed all but dead in the water. Joel Schumacher had tarnished the caped crusader’s enduring legacy with the noxious one-two punch of “Batman Forever” and “Batman and Robin”: two of the gaudiest and most atrocious superhero movies to ever disgrace multiplex screens. Enter Christopher Nolan, hot off the success of his dazzling independent neo-noir “Memento” and his assured remake of the Norwegian mystery “Insomnia.” Nolan’s “Batman” flicks manage an unusual feat: they boast a scope most superhero movies couldn’t manage on their best day, and yet they nevertheless feel gritty, grounded, and real compared to the more cartoonish exploits of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. No small degree of the success of these movies can be attributed to Bale, who plays Bruce Wayne as a spiritually broken hermit who shields himself from the world through a façade of privilege and affluence until he finds himself cornered by forces of evil that he cannot bring himself to ignore. Witnessing Bale’s transformation throughout Nolan’s grandiose trilogy is startling: Bale is appropriately unformed in “Batman Begins,” even if the movie itself amounts to one long, skillfully-mounted prelude. He finds a graver register in “The Dark Knight” – the best and bleakest film in the series – particularly in the scenes where he finds himself squaring off against Heath Ledger’s malevolent Joker. Even in “The Dark Knight Rises,” a movie with no shortage of moving pieces, Bale manages to make an impression amidst Nolan’s beautiful but overwrought plot machinations. It’s not an easy thing, finding a human heartbeat in movies about a costume-wearing vigilante who fights foes with names like Bane and the Scarecrow, but here, as with everything he does, Bale takes the impossible and makes it look easy.
“Public Enemies”
In the incontrovertible filmography of Michael Mann, arguably the world’s greatest director of action, the 2009 gangland drama “Public Enemies” is a bit of an outlier. It’s an overstuffed, anachronistic, undeniably gorgeous affair, but one that lacks the impregnable modern-classic status of the cops-vs.-robbers epic “Heat,” or the “underrated” label that has stuck with sleek, sexy modern cult items like the director’s masterful reimagining of “Miami Vice” or his deliciously abstruse cybercrime thriller “Blackhat”. What’s hard to dispute is that “Public Enemies,” which tells the story of infamous Depression-era bank robber John Dillinger, is one of Mann’s best-acted pictures. It certainly features what is perhaps the last great Johnny Depp performance – you know, before he collapsed into a pit of self-parodic mugging and dubious offscreen behavior. While Depp’s turn as Dillinger is appropriately seething and intense, Christian Bale more than holds his own as FBI Special Agent Melvin Purvis. Bale apparently spent a great deal of time with Purvis’ extended family before making the film, coming to understand that the man once nicknamed “Little Mel” was not some zealot for law and order, but rather, a man who understood the outlaw appeal of someone like Dillinger on an almost bone-deep level. Purvis was instrumental in the manhunts that brought down notorious crooks like Pretty Boy Floyd and Babyface Nelson, but Dillinger was arguably his biggest catch, and Bale captures the man’s single-minded devotion to his job (a Mann trademark) through an earnest and steadfast interpretation of a fascinating antihero. It’s a staunch, mannered, incredible performance, and one of the finest turns in all of Mann’s filmography – no small feat.
“The Fighter”
Despite the fact that he’s got a rail-thin frame, eyes bugging out of his head, and teeth that look like they’re just about to fall out of his skull, Dicky Eklund is the kind of two-timing, fast-talking addict who’s so downright affable that you might actually let him rob you. The cordiality that Bale infuses into his portrait of the ne’er-do-well brother of famous Boston prizefighter Micky Ward is but one of the many winning characteristics that ultimately saves this character from his fundamentally irredeemable nature. In a film full of big personalities, Dicky might just be the biggest: he’s a crack-smoking, motor-mouthed hot mess, given to falling out of windows and getting into dust-ups with the local cops. He’s a complete shithead, but the way Bale plays him, you actually kind of come to love him – and more than that, you come to understand why he is the way he is. In a career full of physically demanding method acting, this is arguably the most show-offy (and perhaps the most impressive) turn Bale has ever committed to. The handsome actor looks every bit the frazzled drug fiend, never once posturing for the camera or detracting from the grimy realism of David O. Russell’s underdog sports fable. He’s particularly great in his scenes with Wahlberg, who plays Ward in a magnetic, low-key register that nicely offsets Bale’s incendiary dramatic fireworks (he’s also incredible in a scene where he croons the Bee Gees’ “I Started a Joke” to his shitstorm of a mother, played by Melissa Leo). In a movie full of losers and screw-ups, Bale masterfully plays a loser screw-up you want to want to root for.
“Out of the Furnace”
Whether or not you dig the films of Scott Cooper, it’s hard to dispute that he seems to really love actors, and he knows how to get good performances out of them. Even Cooper’s lesser works – the overpraised country tragedy “Crazy Heart,” the listless frontier Western “Hostiles” – feature unmistakably dedicated performances from big names like Jeff Bridges, Colin Farrell, Rosamund Pike, and Timothee Chalamet. Bale has worked with Cooper twice now: once in “Hostiles” and previously in “Out of the Furnace,” a pulpy and poignant rust-belt thriller whose propensity for backwoods clichés is subverted by the work of an outstanding, A-list cast. It would be tough for any actor to make a dent in a cast that includes the likes of Casey Affleck, Woody Harrelson, and the iconic fallen legend Sam Shepard. Thankfully for us, Christian Bale is not just any actor. As beleaguered steel mill worker Russell Baze, Bale is a roiling powder keg of rage and regret: all slow-simmering ire festering beneath the surface of an otherwise manly veneer. Strangely enough, this is one of Bale’s most subdued performances (a scene he shares with Zoe Saldana on a bridge overlooking their hometown contains some of the finest acting either of them has ever done). It’s also a treat to see Bale square off with Affleck, who plays Russell’s bare-knuckle fighter brother, as well as Harrelson, playing an unhinged good ol’ boy drug dealer who does utterly unspeakable things with hot dogs. “Out of the Furnace” isn’t the best or most original film Bale’s ever been a part of, but it does contain one of his most affecting turns to date.
“American Hustle”
In case we haven’t made it clear by this point in the list, Christian Bale is known for his transformative physical acting: he can balloon to the size of a small car or shrink himself down to a twiggy frame if that’s what the role demands (although he’s recently implied that he’s no longer interested in this kind of performance). He’s also been known to play cold, unknowable characters that largely remain a mystery, even to themselves. One of the deft touches in David O. Russell’s disorderly, occasionally enchanting crime opus “American Hustle” is to cast Bale against type. In the film, Bale plays a slovenly, warm-hearted con artist named Irving Rosenfeld, who is coerced by an insecure, hot-tempered FBI agent (Bradley Cooper, naturally) into acting as part of a far-reaching sting operation with the intention of taking down corrupt, mob-adjacent East Coast politicians. Russell’s period comedy uses the infamous ABSCAM scandal as the springboard for its basic plot – which, even by the most liberal of standards, doesn’t hold up to close scrutiny. Bale, thank goodness, does his damnedest to hold the circus together. His portrait of Irving Rosenfeld is unexpectedly loving and generous: for our money, the actor has never played a character this human before (remember, this is a guy who played Dick Cheney). Whether he’s grooving to vintage Duke Ellington or attempting to placate the hair-trigger temper of his hysterical wife Rosalyn (Russell regular Jennifer Lawrence), Bale holds the movie in his hand like he’s conning the audience with a big, fat smile on his face. Russell has since retreated from the directorial spotlight, and we now know that the set of “American Hustle” was allegedly a controversy-fraught mess (rumor has it that Bale and Russell repeatedly clashed onset over the director’s treatment of Amy Adams), but this remains one of the chameleonic actor’s loosest and funniest turns.
“The Big Short”
“The Big Short” marked a period of career transition for Adam McKay. Where the SNL-writer-turned-director had once been known for a series of goofily surreal satirical comedies starring his pal Will Ferrell (“Talladega Nights: The Legend of Ricky Bobby,” the modern frat classic “Anchorman,” the uproarious and eerily prescient “Step Brothers”), “The Big Short” signaled a leap into more mature and high-minded waters that would continue with last year’s ambitious Dick Cheney biopic “Vice” (in which Bale enjoyed a starring role). Based on Michael Lewis’ book “The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine,” McKay’s film was a mile-a-minute dramatization of how the 2008 market crash was kicked into effect by the U.S. real estate bubble of the mid-to-late aughts. Watching the film is simultaneously exhilarating and exhausting, as McKay proceeds to throw infographics, repeated instances of fourth-wall-breaking, and fake commercials starring the likes of Margot Robbie and Anthony Bourdain at the viewer. It’s a lot to take in, but thankfully, “The Big Short” is a very well-acted picture. Bale plays eccentric hedge fund manager Michael Burry: one of the first individuals to detect fissures in the looming housing market crisis. Frankly, it’s one of the oddest performances Bale has ever given. Burry dresses like a slob, bangs a pair of drumsticks to heavy metal music while sitting at his work desk, and generally annoys everyone around him – even if he’s the first to catch on to this wave of extremely bad news, that doesn’t make him easy company. In a film that features an uncharacteristically tragic turn from Steve Carrell and Ryan Gosling playing a preening, oily finance bro, Bale still manages to give “The Big Short’s” standout performance. Is it any wonder McKay tapped him to play the villainous former Veep in his Oscar-nominated follow-up?\
“Ford V. Ferrari”
In the flashy, crowd-pleasing Oscar darling “Ford V. Ferrari,” Christian Bale plays British racecar driver Ken Miles as a tightly knotted ball of aggression and withering, derisive gripes. To say he doesn’t play well with others would be an understatement. This Ken Miles is the kind of guy who will punch your lights out or throw a wrench in your direction if he’s having a bad day. And yet, in spite of the movie’s borderline-outmoded characterization of Miles as a troubled but indispensable genius, Bale makes sure that we come to like him. After all, he’s a good father, he loves his wife, and yes, he’s very good at what he does. At the heart of “Ford V. Ferrari” is a story about monomania and petty, relentlessly driven men who prioritize a sense of grand achievement above everything else in their lives. Bale plays the former engineer and WWII tank sergeant in a weathered but undeniably appealing key of heightened naturalism – this is certainly a showy performance, but it’s also a far cry from the actor’s more theatrical work in the likes of “The Fighter” and “Vice.” “Ford V. Ferrari” has been directed by James Mangold, who, in films like “Walk the Line” and “Logan,” offered viewers an insight into the limits of masculine self-mythologizing. He and Bale make a fine team, as the actor has spent much of his career profiling the kinds of taciturn, emotionally withdrawn men that Mangold is frequently drawn to. To put it simply, Bale is dynamite in “Ford V. Ferrari” (no surprise there), playing the hell-raising rogue in a cast that also includes Matt Damon as automotive pioneer Carroll Shelby and Jon Bernthal as Ford Motors V.P. Lee Iacocca. While the movie never quite matches Bale for his dynamism, the actor makes for a fascinating wild card in what is otherwise a sturdy, satisfying and entirely conventional underdog sports story.
Honorable Mentions
When you look at the sum total of his filmography, it seems obvious that Christian Bale has been giving great performances ever since he was a young man. He’s terrific in Steven Spielberg’s adaptation of J.G. Ballard’s “Empire of the Sun,” where he plays a British schoolboy separated from his parents in WWII-era occupied Japan. He also has a small but meaty part in Kenneth Branagh’s “Henry V,” which is widely regarded as one of the finest Shakespearean screen adaptations of all time.
Bale was also charming and memorable in the Gillian Armstrong-directed “Little Women” as Laurie, the headstrong and feckless neighbor to the March girls (Laurie will be played by Timothee Chalamet in Greta Gerwig’s upcoming adaptation). Bale adroitly channeled scummy, vaguely Patrick Bateman-esque vibes as the haughty villain of John Singleton’s mostly rote “Shaft” remake, and he brought a taciturn, commanding gravitas to the part of protest singer Jack Rollins in the kaleidoscopic, uneven-but-fascinating Bob Dylan anti-biopic “I’m Not There.”
Bale has also done two films with the legendary Terrence Malick: “The New World,” where he plays early American settler John Rolfe, and “Knight of Cups,” where he plays a spiritually hollow screenwriter searching for connection in a debauched Los Angeles. Bale was even good in Ridley Scott’s mostly dreary biblical drama “Exodus: Gods and Kings,” and he also managed to provide the Scott Cooper-directed Western “Hostiles” with a forceful dramatic anchor. Just last year, Bale was rightly nominated for his bravely reptilian turn in the Adam McKay-directed “Vice,” and he deserves kudos for refusing to imbue his portrait of Dick Cheney with any falsely-engineered redeeming qualities.
“Ford V. Ferrari” is being released by 20th Century Fox on November 15.