*SPOILER ALERT (if you're not yet through the second season)*
The thing about Norman Reedus, the real clincher, is the boyish charm. Not just that he has it, -- most successful actors do to some extent,-- but that he never employs it. It's there; we can see it; he just never wields it as a tactic. That's bold, since wielding your boyish charm is one of the easiest ways to win our hearts. The sex appeals of Dean and Brando were founded on it. Today, someone like Franco is good enough to pretend he doesn't need it, but he still uses it when he's backed into a corner. There are actors who style their whole careers around it (see Michael "observe my boyish charm" Madsen). Even John Wayne had to be pulled aside by Howard Hawks during the filming of Red River (when the Duke was 41!) and told that he had to stop doing that thing, the thing where he crumples his forehead and lifts his eyebrows and widens his eyes. It was the Duke's stock gesture indicating Boyish Charm, he used it in pretty much every film before then, and Hawks must have convinced him, because, as far as I can tell, he rarely used it after that.
Reedus is the toughest bad-ass on the modern screen. He can give us a sociopath of such unmitigated ice and deadpan ferocity that he makes the young Lawrence Tierneys and Richard Widmarks of the world look like Archie and Jughead. He's so good at it that you have to be careful how you cast him. Awesome as he is in Messengers 2, he's best in ensemble, where you don't have to worry about his civilized veneer slipping long enough for him to chop off the wrong person's head with any handily-placed machete. This guy belongs in Resevoir Dogs, which may be why the Walking Dead is the perfect vehicle for him, and it's why the decision not to emphasize the boyish charm takes guts and discipline.
Here are three of my favorite, most telling Reedus moments in season two.
MOMENT #1: It's towards the end of the first real Daryl-Dixon-dominated episode, "Chupacabra". He's been through hell. Thrown from his horse, he's twice tumbled down the same cliff-face and had to climb back up with an arrow stuck clean through his side. Barely alive, he has to waste two Walkers with scant weaponry, and then he takes a bullet on his way back to the farm. This moment is later, when he's in bed, recuperating. The woman whose daughter he nearly died trying to find gives him a brilliant compliment. After she leaves, the camera lingers on him huddled under the covers, his face an enigma. He's not doing anything, and yet, there he is, exuding boyish charm, without moving a muscle, without playing it at all.
MOMENT #2: This one is not about boyish charm, but something else. It's a few eps later, and Shane picks a fight with him when tempers flare in front of the Walker-barn. They start to fight, and just as they're separated by the others we see Daryl's face go slack and quiet, with just a hint of pleasure in it. It is so convincingly the mask of a dangerous man switching into psycho-mode that we wonder if Shane realizes how lucky he is for the intervention. The only face I can think of as scary is Clint Eastwood in the Unforgiven, when he's storming the bar with the shotgun, fueled by drink, his eyes insanely ablaze with fury born of anguish.
MOMENT #3: This one is harder to quantify. It's in "Pretty Much Dead Already", when Glenn tells everyone at breakfast about the barn full of Walkers. We see all their faces, and most of them give the reactions you'd expect. But look at Reedus, in the back. Tell me what he's thinking. Tell me that's not a brilliant, enigmatic moment.
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