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There's a predictable trajectory to many leading-men's careers. They appear in a couple of small but memorable films. They reveal themselves to be above-average actors with both chops and charm. They each also have some catchy quality -- that chin, that smile, those eyebrows -- that sticks to your brain like Velcro. (The hooky, sticky part, not the furry, stuck-to part -- that would be your brain.) And they give you hope because they are a little different and a little better and a little more interesting than all of the bland, action-picture-carrying leading men out there.
Then, once they've achieved a modicum of recognizability and respect, they set about doing their darndest to become bland, action-picture-carrying leading men. They star in a bunch of stinkers. They're paired with the hottest female actresses in tepid romantic comedies that nobody likes. They don rumpled cop suits and shiny space suits. They do their best to portray the kind of man that every woman in America supposedly wants to fall in love with. And, if they're especially diligent, they wiggle their way, with some effort, onto the long list of people who get offered the roles already turned down by Mel Gibson, Brad Pitt, and Tom Cruise.
Then, late in their careers, once everyone's written them off as capable of little more than frittering their potential on second-rate sleepwalking, they take a few, small, interesting roles, and everyone thinks, Hey, he can actually act!. And they start to crawl their way back to credibility -- in other words, the very place they occupied at the start of their careers, before they flushed it all on films full of brainy serial killers and really hot forensics experts.
Let's call this the Dennis Quaid Curve.
Aaron Eckhart currently finds himself at the top of this curve: the summit marked by the brainy serial killers and really hot forensics experts. This weekend you can enjoy him in Suspect Zero -- which we haven't seen, and which may well turn out to be the Se7en or The Silence of the Lambs of the twenty-first century. More likely, however, it will turn out to be just like every other dogged-cop chasing a serial-killer movie of the past twenty years that wasn't either Se7en or The Silence of the Lambs. Like, say, Switchback, the 1997 movie that starred Dennis Quaid.
The estimable Wing Chun once pitted Eckhart against Thomas Jane in the Battle of the Lanky Second Leads, and Eckhart quite rightly was crowned the winner. But we should update this by pointing out that while Jane is now starring in Stander, the critical-darling indie film about a corrupt South African cop, Eckhart is in Suspect Zero, a film about yawn. Then again, Jane starred in The Punisher and Eckhart didn't, so don't expect to see the title belt swapping hands just yet.
Eckhart, though, had so much promise. He was so good in In the Company of Men as the über-evil frat boy that people actually came up to him in supermarkets and told him off for being so mean. Then he turned around and played a lovable, kind-hearted biker in Erin Brockovich. Under a huge beard and bandanna! You go, guy!
Here was a guy with movie-star good looks and a wildly impressive range. What could go wrong? Well, for starters, The Core, followed closely by Paycheck. There are many reasons an actor might decide to star in these films, but "quality choices" is not one of them. (For a hint as to the reason, please see the title of the latter film.)
Once Eckhart stopped taking interesting roles, he went from being a guy with movie-star good looks and a wildly impressive range to being a wannabe movie star with movie-star good looks. Well, we already have lots of those.
So it looks like we'll just have to sit it out for ten or twelve years, until Eckhart reaches the redemptive phase of his career (as Quaid did with Far From Heaven, or Kurt Russell in Miracle), and we can enjoy him once again in exactly the kind of roles that made us like him in the first place. In the meantime, though, that doorbell you're hearing is the Fame Repo Department. And they've got some big, empty boxes they need to fill before they leave.
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