Sam Worthington - ActingBoardingPass/Fiche d'Acteur

     Sam Worthington, one of the new talented actors out there, takes his time to build his career on the big screen.

     Starting his acting career in Australia in his early twenties at the television first and then on the big screen, he got noticed in his country as of 2000. It's not before 2009 that his career took the direction of the international studios and Hollywood, making his first big print on the sand.

     We watched him in different kind of movies, but not yet a huge variation of characters ; some films were big at the box-office and others a lot less. Nevertheless, always true to his work, he doesn't seem to let the big «Hollywood machine» swallow him till death but rather takes his time and follow his heart.

 

     Let me try, not only to pass through some of his characters, but to show you what you may have missed from this actor.

 

 

 «Gettin' Square» - 2003 / Barry «Wattsy» Wirth


Freshly out of prison, his character will try his best to start over despite his past.

«Rogue»  - 2007 / Neil Kelly

     His character will have to face a pretty big man-eating crocodile in the Australian outback, amougst a group of tourists trapped.



«Terminator Salvation» - 2009 / Marcus Wright



Marcus Wright

     His character - kind of coming from the past, before Skynet - discovers the war between humans and the machines. Somehow, he'll help John Connor in this desperate fight for the human race.

Jake Sully - «Avatar»

«Avatar» - 2009 / Jake Sully

     He portrayed a paraplegic Marine dispatched to the moon Pandora on a unique mission. He'll be torn between following his orders and protecting this new world.

«Clash of the Titans» - 2010 / Perseus



Perseus - «Clash of the Titans»

     Perseus - in the loss of his family - will discover that he's a mortal son of Zeus. He'll helped the city of Argos in his fight to save themselves against the underworld and the Gods.

«The Debt» - 2010 / Young David


«The Debt» - yound David

     His character is a Mossad agent who crossed into East Berlin in 1965, along with two others, to apprehend a notorious Nazi war criminal.

 

«Texas Killing Fields» - 2011 / Mike Souder



Nick Cassidy - «Man on the Ledge»

     Mike Souder - an homicide detective, investigates a series of unsolved murders in the Texas City bayous.

«Man on the Ledge» - 2012 / Nick Cassidy

     He portrayed a cop - wrongly accused of stealing one of the biggest diamond - who's trying to prove and convince everyone that he's innocent.

 

«Wrath of the Titans» - 2012 / Perseus


Perseus - «Wrath of the Titans»

     Perseus will safe his father - the God Zeus - captured by his son Ares and his brother Hades, and stop Cronos from coming back and destroying everything.



The Performances:

     I haven't watched anything from Sam Worthington on the «bad-terrifying-despicable» or «i-want-to-kill-him-myself» category yet (maybe he did but can't put a hand on it!) and that's a shame because he will be great. As Mike Souder, you realize that, the character can be hateful, a stupid badass/bastard cop but with a real good side. It was a nice surprise when i discovered this character. Let's hope that in the future some dark side characters will be brought to him because he'll be excellent. Why? Because he has this ability to express the frightning quietness of a mysterious and charismatic individual.

     For pretty much all the different characters above, you'll feel the non-hero guy, even if he doesn't have a choice he'll do the job : Perseus or «Wattsy» for instance.
     Pay attention very well because you can see clearly, and that's where the subtle part lies, on his face or in his eyes the strength of his decision in his choices. When Perseus fight to death his brother Ares, he refused to resign to lose his son or any human being, even if he's not as strong and powerful as the God.
     Same as Nick Cassidy, you see the interior fight to choose between his innocence through the existence of the diamond or his brother's life, and then, he risks his own life to keep fighting for his innocence.
     His character in «Terminator Salvation» is quite unusual, his work is always in subtlety especially when he discovers who he became thanks to Skynet ... it's chilling. Or at the end, in his decision of giving his heart as a second chance for him (and John Connor). In my opinion, Sam Worthington delivered a better and stronger performance than Christian Bale.

      Sam plays his characters in softness, sometimes subtly, but always straight to the core and that's his strength. Expressing the right feeling or emotion subtly is not easy, you must keep mostly everything inside and only show a certain amount of it gradually or at a precise moment. His work always illustrates what the character is supposed to be. The actor disappears behind every single role.

It's obvious that this actor hasn't show us all he can do ... so let's seat and keep watching!

(End of Part 1 ... for now)

Keanu Reeves - ActingBoardingPass/Fiche d'Acteur (part 2)

Here's the following of Keanu Reeves - ActingBoardingPass.

(clic here to read the 1st part)

Some of the really «bad-disgusting-hateful» characters:

• «The Gift» - 2000 / Donnie Barksdale

Donnie Barksdale is an extremely violent man who'll be quite quickly falsely accused of the murder of a young woman in the bayous.

Don John

• «Much Ado About Nothing» - 1993 / Don John

His character is the King's brother, a very evil-dark-despicable and vile man, who conspires by any possible way to hurt the King's and anyone else happyness.

• «The Watcher» - 2000 / Griffin

Griffin is a meticulous serious killer who likes to play cat and mouse with an ex FBI Special Agent who's failed in capturing Griffin in the past.

The Performances:

     I really love the work that he did on these first two characters. Keanu Reeves can be who ever you want, name it! Inside these  movies, he embodied absolute despicable humans being. Hate, desrespect, pretentious and arrogant represent perfectly the characters (who are supposed to be like that!). Everything's coming from both characters will inspire only one word:  contempt. The look of his eyes is full of darkness and at some points, you can easily have chills, so forget the handsome actor, you do enjoy to see him being punished (or so!).

Some of the «nice but lost-hurt-liked» characters:

Paul Sutton

• «A Walk in the Clouds» - 1995 / Paul Sutton

He's portraying a young man returning from war, and trying to get his old life of selling chocolate boxes back, but will end up by falling in love with a young woman and her very old-fashioned family.

• «The Devil's Advocate» - 1997 / Kevin Lomax

Kevin Lomax - a young lawyer - is hired by one of the biggest firm in New York which appeared to be the devil's office.

• «The Matrix» saga - 1999-2003 / Neo

Neo


A computer hacker, becoming a living prophecy who's supposed to set what's left of human race free with the help of other rebels.








 

Julian Mercer

• «Something's Gotta Give» - 2003 / Julian Mercer

Julian Mercer is a doctor who tries to make a Broadway Author fall in love with him despite the age difference and a rival.

• «Generation Um...» - 2012 / John

John - and his two cohorts - lives pretty much on the fringe of the society, trying to figure out what he wanna do in life.

The Performances:

    Keanu Reeves evolves the most in this category, like a fish in the ocean. You will always see and feel somehow the pain or the sadness and disappointement of the characters.
     What i like about his work with John, you can clearly see at first the character in some kind of nothingness. He doesn't know what to do with his life, he's got issues with his family, he's lost and falling. The minute he carried the camera stolen, John lightens up from inside, he starts to live, you can feel the excitment of being behind the camera, it's cute and touching. The character inside the story may not be that interesting on a general view but Keanu certainly delivered the outcome! And that's what i remember from it.
     With Neo or Paul Sutton - two opposite story but - you can feel the goodness inside this characters, the loneliness, the difficulty of making things right whether it's a fight against family's traditions or a fight to death to give a chance to humans to get a better life. Keanu can express so easily those stages of feelings. Pay attention at the détails! At the beginning of «The Matrix», his face really express stupefaction, incredulity and don't forget that he actually did shot these scenes few times!

     Becoming a young doctor, still single, falling in love for an older woman and tasting the bite of the rejection at the end is interesting as well. Or being thisty for power, winning any cause, being the best and savor and revel in the fall of the losers ... starting to embrace the path of the Devil.

     What do we see on screen? Keanu Reeves trying to portraying a poor rejected doctor or an abusive husband?! No, we'll see right before our eyes the character, very much alive.     
     So it's impossible not to see the greatness in this actor because at the end, he delivered all the time what he was supposed to, according to a screenplay and a director, and that's the most important thing to keep in mind for an actor.
     He isn't afraid of changing his appearance if needed, doesn't care of being disliked by the audience or the critics and most of all, he doesn't care if a movie will not be a blockbuster.

     After a first documentary in 2012 on the history, process and workflow of both digital and photochemical film creation  (Side by Side), he'll take the seat of director for Man of Tai Chi in 2013 which seems for his character to join once again the category of the «bad-disgusting-hateful» one. Can we expect Keanu going more often behind the camera in the future?! Time will tell ...

Something certain, Keanu Reeves has a passion for acting

and he didn't show us yet the whole range of his talents. 

Keanu Reeves - ActingBoardingPass/Fiche d'Acteur (Part 1)

     Keanu Reeves, one of the most talented actor, owns a very long and impressive filmography but not quiet finished.
 

     His acting career started in his early twenties at the television but it's only 10 years later (or so) - in the '90s - that he's taken the direction of the studios and the big screen, and made his first print on the sand.

     We watched him in different kind of characters, different kind of movies ; some were huge at the box-office and others a lot less. Nevertheless, he's today as passioned as he was at the beginning and always true to his work.

 

     Let me try, not only to pass through some of his characters, but to show you what you may have missed from this man.

Some of the «sweet-young-innocent» characters:

• «Dangerous Liaisons» - 1988 / Le Chevalier Raphael Danceny
  

  

  Raphael Danceny

His young and quiet innocent character is stuck in the middle of some high-stakes games of passion and betrayal from two rich and bored aristocrats in Rococo France.

• «Dracula» from Bram Stoker - 1992 / Jonathan Harker

His character will be tragically change forever by Dracula and his fiancée, who'll fall for the vampire.
 

The Performances:

     Keanu depicted these characters the way it's supposed to be. Not only because he was young at this time (so a fresh face) but because he managed to show all the different stages his characters experienced inside the stories: innocence - jealousy - love - passion - a contained anger due to his rank in society - fear ...

All emotions and feelings are expressed with sensibility and tactfulness, no more no less. 

 

Some of the «action-tough cookie but good guy» characters:

• 

  Jack Traven

  «Point Break» - 1991 / Johnny Utah

His character - a young FBI agent - goes undercover to catch a gang of bank robbers who may be surfers.

• «Speed» - 1994 / Officer Jack Traven

He portrayed a cop, who's trying to prevent a bomb exploding aboard a city bus, by keeping a high speed inside Los Angeles, and at the same time, trying to catch the bomb maker.

• «Constantine» - 2005 / John Constantine

John Constantine

John Constantine - an irreverent and supernatural detective who's dealing with the mystical - is a demon hunter, hoping that his good deeds may give him after all a place in heaven.

The Performances:

     Keanu playes at most ease any of those characters, you won't find anything wrong to say. As John Constantine, he keeps during the movie this kind of nausea for life and hate for hell. Doesn't care less for human being because he wants a place in heaven, he'll fight for the good. This character is close to be disliked for his selfishness. As Jack Traven or Johnny Utah, we can see his strength and conviction in justice, as well as his determination to catch the bad guy or to make things right and knowing when to let go for the goods. He's any simple regular guy outside who protect us, follow orders but step aside if necessary.

(End of Part 1)