(2013. dir: Ariel Vroman) A thing few actors can do successfully is to alter their personal rhythm for the length of an entire film. Yeah, you can make a point of talking faster, jumping harder on your cues, or, like Jeremy Irons in Reversal of Fortune, you can slow yourself down just a notch, give yourself a solider center to work from, sort of jerryrig a strength of gravitas. Most of the time quickening your natural pace comes across as caricature (not always a bad thing: think Brad Pitt in Twelve Monkeys). At its most effective, you get the caged explosions of Ralph Fiennes in In Bruges, or, even better, Ben Kingsley in Sexy Beast, this last surely one of the most terrifying performances ever. Slowing one's energy, on the other hand, results in a confined performance (which worked towards Irons' Oscar, that stoical mien allowing the creepiness of his possible guilt to blindside us at the end).
The fact is, you know you're going to get a different tempo if you cast Christopher Walken, Samuel L. Jackson, Al Pacino or Michael Caine. You can pretty much count on it, and you have to, because complementary tempos make for great exchanges. Butch is quick, Sundance is steady. You cast the rapidfire Pesci opposite the steady DeNiro, and sparks fly when Robert Downey's staccato Tony Stark kicks up a bromance with Mark Ruffalo's cautious Bruce Banner. In Bruges works because Colin Farrell is fast and furious, Brendan Gleeson is slow and steady; McDonagh's follow-up 7 Psychopaths suffers because he's cast Farrell in the steady role, playing off the unstoppered stream-of-consciousness that comprises Sam Rockwell's hit-and-miss wit, and Farrell feels hogtied. You can tell it because when he finally gets to play off the (slow and steady) Walken, he brightens up, comes to life. (And, speaking of Walken, remember the classic "Sicilian" scene in True Romance, the one where Dennis Hopper talks his ear off? It works because Hopper is quick, Walken is steady.)
Even when an actor "disguises" himself well, he's not usually doing it through tempo-change. Daniel Day-Lewis is our current shape-shifter laureate, and yet the quickest he ever gets is, what? the punk kid in My Beautiful Laundrette? (I haven't seen a lot of his work, so help me out here.) My point is that even our best actors, even our Streeps, may speak more quickly or slowly, but the natural energy-tempos tend to stay the same.
Now I want you to look at Chris Evans. As Captain America and in other roles (Cellular, Push, Street Kings) he's slow and steady, but he always has a tendency to jump right on a cue. You come away thinking you have a clue into the man himself, that this is the way he presents himself in the world. Then you watch the Losers and the Iceman, and you get a whole different guy. He's quick, he's surefire, he can go forever without a pause, and, particularly as Mr. Freezy in the Iceman, his performance still seems thoughtful and intelligent. This is a smart guy; his mind just works so fast he never has to show you he's thinking about what he's going to say. If you're not looking for Evans in this movie, you won't recognize him. He's disguised himself, yeah, with moppy hair and '70s glasses, but he's also accelerated his tempo so successfully that just don't catch a glimpse of the good Captain, not a single one, and that's no easy accomplishment for a matinee idol of his stature and fame.
As far as the rest of the movie goes, it's Michael Shannon as a mob hitman. You know what to expect, right? Sure, he'll be great, he always is, but you know his coldness by now, his scariness, you think you don't need to see it because you can guess his moves, right? But not so. He's mesmerizing to watch. And I fully guarantee that in the last few minutes, his closing soliloquy, he'll blow you away. He's that good.
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