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Some actors make it easy for you to like them by starring, and acquitting themselves well, in movies you mostly enjoy. Other actors, by starring only in crappy movies and doing a bad job, can be summarily dismissed, both as professional performers and, often, as human beings. However, the matter of which box a star belongs in gets complicated when an actor you enjoy -- who delivers consistently strong performances and who never fails to charm you in interviews -- seems only to show up in really bad movies. This is the problem Paul Bettany presents to us.
Bettany has so much going for him, truly. He's handsome and tall and has a lovely accent. He has a very beautiful bride in Jennifer Connelly, and somehow, when he goes on talk shows and twits her by saying things like how hard her life is because "she's quite plain," it's cute and winning, and not off-putting and gross, like when Guy Ritchie refers to Madonna as "the missus." He's good in dramas, and he's good in comedies. He's also good-looking. We feel it's worth mentioning at least twice.
The issue is the dramas and the comedies Bettany is good in. Because they are not good. In fact, almost to a one, they are not just bad but baaaaaaaaad. Bizzad, even. It's not even like they're all bad in the same way. Some are pretentious, like Dogville. Some are derivative, like Gangster No. 1. Then, just when you're starting to forget why you ever liked him, Bettany will throw you a Master And Commander: The Far Side Of The World, an interesting movie in which he does a great deal with a distinctly un-showy role, and for a while you feel like if you tell anyone you like him, they won't mock you like they did that time you confessed to having a teenaged crush on Ted Danson. (This happened to a friend of ours.)
Strictly speaking, Bettany isn't doing anything wrong with his career. He did what every British actor must do, by starting out in British TV, appearing in fancy Brit movies, period pieces, and complexy financed Euro-puddings. He made what was supposed to be a big popcorny hit (A Knight's Tale), and although that didn't quite become the hit it was intended to be, it did at least make Americans aware of who he was, allowing him to put all the other requisite notches on his CV: supporting role in a multiple award nominee (A Beautiful Mind); romcom (Wimbledon); actioner (Firewall). He hasn't even shamed himself by trying (and, as most British actors do, failing) to perform an American accent, as far as we've seen. On paper, he's doing everything right. But on paper, you can't really appreciate how uncomfortable it is to watch Harrison Ford, a pensioner, in a fist fight, and why being the guy he's fighting is a bad idea.
Bettany's current film, The Da Vinci Code, sort of encapsulates what we're talking about: it's a huge movie, but doesn't rest entirely on his shoulders; it allows him to play not just a villain (which actors apparently love to do) but one we're supposed to think is extra-freaky just because he happens to be an albino (eh?), and also disguises his evident masochistic streak as extreme devotion to the Catholic sect Opus Dei; it's a summer tentpole, which will expose him to many millions more people than have ever had occasion to see him on film before. As a calculated career move, it's perfect. As an artistic product, it blows. It's barely even possible to tell whether Bettany gives a good performance amid all the historical interludes that keep interrupting the action, and as far as imbuing his character, Silas, with any kind of humanity or vulnerability that might make us feel ambivalent about him or his actions in the story, even that is taken out of Bettany's hands thanks to some Howard-rific flashbacks of Silas's tragic albino childhood. And, for real: albino, Dan Brown? Were they really regarded with that much horror and disgust in the late twentieth century, when Silas was growing up? We haven't read Brown's other book, Angels & Demons, but we can only assume that the villain in that one is -- now, brace yourselves -- left-handed.
If The Da Vinci Code continues to do well -- and the odds seem to be in its favour -- what will probably happen next is that all the film's supporting actors will be kicked up the fame chain and get offered more of the kinds of movies we're supposed to think actors should do when they've made their bones. Tautou, as a non-native English speaker, might play a taciturn Bond villainess or a winsome Parisienne for Seann William Scott to fall in love with on his year abroad from Florida State. Reno, whose English is a bit better, could be the stern but loving Catholic patriarch of an absurdly large family of immigrants, grumpy that his children are starting to assimilate into American culture and don't even know anything about wine. And while Bettany's next film, according to the IMDb, looks to be a small character piece with other British actors, who knows which Generation X-beloved toy Jerry Bruckheimer is going to turn into the subject of his next movie? You think that British actors are going to be too choosy to do that shit, and then you remember that Christopher Eccleston was in Gone In Sixty Seconds. Bettany could parlay the mega-fame he's sure to earn from Da Vinci into any number of huge paycheques, which is exactly why we hope it performs below expectations, forcing him to take a meeting with Danny Boyle or Michel Gondry instead of Michael Bay.
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