“The Lucky Ones” (2008)
It’s a subtle difference, but if this were a list of “best films featuring Rachel McAdams,” as opposed to her best
performances, I’d probably not be including Neil Burger‘s
awkward, contrivance-laden dramedy about three returning Iraq war
soldiers engaging in a “Planes Trains & Automobiles“-style
cross-country odyssey. But unsatisfying though the film is, it earns a
spot here because not only is McAdams great in it (along with an
also-terrific Michael Pena and a quiet but still impressive turn from
Tim Robbins), it shows a different facet to her talents. As Colee Dunn,
thrust into company with two fellow soldiers when flight cancellations necessitate a
rideshare road trip as their best chance of getting to Vegas,
McAdams is a vibrant, funny, changeable presence: she talks too much in
her twangy accent and meddles a great deal, but her goodness is palpable —a kind of ordinary, non-glamorous goodness. So even
while the plot become progressively less believable, she’s still
supremely easy to root for, and while some of the manufactured scrapes they get themselves into along the way make you genuinely worry
for a military that might be comprised of such folk, something about
her mixture of naiveté and toughness rings very true to the idea of any young person compelled to enlist in the army as their best means of earning an income. The film received fairly murderous reviews,
though even the nastiest often singled out the trio’s
performances as a strong point. And it was a total bomb at the box office,
like most other films with an Iraq war theme, which is a little
ironic since preachiness about war is not
really one of its numerous faults. In fact, the strongest aspects of the movie exist
outside the framework of the tiresome road movie/journey of self
discovery beats: its winning chemistry with Colee as the pivot, its
unfashionable sincerity, and the warmth of its treatment of its flawed
but hopeful characters, where McAdams again manages to transcend cliche
and contrivance to feel genuine amid so much that’s fake.
See
Also: For more amiable but low-stakes drama with McAdams as
its most appealing ingredient, you can also check out “Morning
Glory.” An attempt at a kind of Mike Nichols/Neil Simon-type vibe, it
also stars Harrison Ford and Diane Keaton as sparring cohosts on a
breakfast TV show the McAdams’ character produces, and while it lacks
urgency, it is diverting and good-natured and McAdams, unusually for such
a considerate team-player actress, pretty much steals the show.
“State of Play” (2009)
Kevin Macdonald‘s starry Hollywood reworking of the 6-part BBC TV series of the same name didn’t perform as well at the box office as you might expect for a film starring Russell Crowe, Ben Affleck, Robin Wright, Helen Mirren, Jason Bateman and Jeff Daniels, as well as McAdams. But it did give the actress, who’d had a couple of duds since her 2004/2005 breakout years, one of her best shots so far at proving she could not only play a non-romantic role, but could hold her own against heavyweight company. And she succeeds on both counts: one of the charms of this twisty thriller, weaving a complex plot out of high-level intrigue, political sex scandals, journalistic ethics and the uncomfortably topical issue of private Blackwater-style corporations taking over formerly state-controlled military operations, is that the filmmakers do not try to also crowbar a blossoming romance into the mix. Instead, as the “dewy-eyed cub reporter” as Mirren’s editor describes her, her relationship to Crowe’s schlubby, jaded but instinctively brilliant older journo is predicated on earning his respect through her professionalism, and McAdams brings a spiky sincerity to the role of a blogger suddenly thrust into the big leagues that is both endearing and admirable. Like the rest of the fine cast, she underplays and helps to ground what is a fairly convoluted story in some semblance of reality and almost incidentally delivers one of the best portraits of the newspaper business in the age of corporate media takeovers and blogging in recent memory.
See Also: Just as twisty, just as understated and just as good as “State of Play,” if considerably less glossy, is 2014’s “A Most Wanted Man.” An adaptation of a John Le Carre novel directed by Anton Corbijn, it will always be known as one of Philip Seymour Hoffman‘s last roles, and undoubtedly his last great one. But McAdams again steps up in this peerless company (though her accent wavers), and as an immigration lawyer caught up in this international spy plot, she projects a determined idealism as a kind of mirror image to the Hoffman character’s weary cynicism.