Morgan Freeman, great American actor or not? I first encountered him when I was a child, of course, on "The Electric Company." I first became aware of him, however, when Siskel and Ebert singled him out of an incredibly bad Christopher Reeve called "Street Smart." (This happens to me a lot. My favorite comic writer is Christopher Priest. I remember vividly turning to the credit page thinking "Who wrote this? He's great." That's how you know a comics guy is great, btw. Since the reviews are crap, basically, you know someone is good when you read the book and think, "Who is this guy? He's great." I might expand on this later on.)
Morgan Freeman made that movie my senior year in high school, back before I was a critic, but he hasn't stopped making movies since. And he's been in a lot of good ones. He's been in "The Shawshank Redemption," "Se7en," "Driving Miss Daisy," "Glory," etc, etc, et further cetera. However, those are great movies with other great actors in them. He's also been in "Chain Reaction."
I started thinking about this because he's the perfect Lucius Fox in the "Batman" movie. He's got a wonderful voice. The best voice since James Earl Jones. He's black. He has great screen presence. But he lacks the one thing Lucius Fox has. He doesn't seem to be dumber than Batman. Bruce Wayne is meant to be the smartest guy in the room. Lucius is supposed to be fantastic at running Wayne Industries, but he's not supposed to be better than Bruce would be is if he wasn't out beating up the Joker all the time. In "batman begins," Lucius Fox was smarter than Batman.
Can Morgan Freeman play dumb? Maybe, maybe not. Even in "Million Dollar Baby" wherein he plays a punch drunk boxer, he's still smarter than everyone else. His character in "Unforgiven" was not a rocket scientist, but he wasn't stupid compared to anyone else in the flick. Red, in Shawshank, was the second smartest character in the movie. When I think of people I consider truly great actors, they usually handle at least one moron. Donald Sutherland played Vernon Pinkley in "The Dirty Dozen." Spencer Tracy Played Manuel in "Captain Courageous," and Mr. Hyde in "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde." Kate Hepburn played Susan Vance in "Bringing Up Baby." Bogie played some real idiots.
Morgan Freeman only plays smart guys, and I think that's a hole in his resume. He would have been miscast as Blockbuster, but Lucius Fox in the Batman series is not a particularly interesting career choice.
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5 comments:
Street Smart is an awful movie (I was rooting for the Christopher Reeve character to fall flat on his face), but Morgan Freeman was absolutely chilling in it, and his performance more than makes it worth seeing.
I first became aware of him by name when Pauline Kael singled him out in the Robert Redford movie Brubaker (calling him something like "the most charismatic actor working today"). If I recall, I read the review before I saw the movie, and Freeman does turn in a feral (and I think wordless) performance. But when I saw the object of Kael's exhortation, all I could think was, "That's Easy Reader!"
Since Doug mentioned Brubaker...
It should be noted that Freeman's character might be the role you're looking for, Mike. He's easily fooled by Redford in that movie. It's small enough that there's little to judge it by, but I'd put that one up.
I remember that Siskel & Ebert episode too. I've often said that they should have kept doing those "special" episodes about Actors To Watch. He and Michelle Pfieffer are unfortunately the only two I remember from any of those episodes, but I always did want to seek out more by the people they touted.
Maybe Roeper isn't sharp enough to notice the under-noticed?
It seems to me that in the Michelle Pfieffer episode, they also talked about Aidan Quinn, who had an early movie out about the same time as Grease II.
I confess, I don't believe I have seen Brubaker.
My memory of Morgan Freeman on Siskel and ebert was them praising him but trashing the flick, so I am thinking it was a normal review show that i saw.
He can likely play dumb...I'm not sure if he can play non-noble though.
Thing is, Batman Begins's Luscious isn't DC Luscious. DC is a super accountant...BB is a sooper inventor. (I guess Nolan felt making Bruce a sooper fighter and sooper inventor might be too much).
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