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As hard as it is to imagine now, there was a time when you could legitimately confuse Kevin Spacey and Kevin Pollak. That time was, oh, about 1994, when one was the nebbishy, uptight guy from Glengarry Glen Ross and The Ref who talked in clipped sentences through pursed lips, and the other was the nebbishy, wise-ass guy from A Few Good Men and Ricochet who was manic and did a really good Shatner impersonation. You knew one was Spacey and one was Pollak, but you could never quite remember which was which.
Then, in 1995, their careers collided in The Usual Suspects, and suddenly one Kevin was known as the brilliant actor who stole the movie with his transcendent turn as Verbal Kint, and the other Kevin was known as one of the other guys who was in the movie who was also good. Fast-forward five years, and one is the multi-Oscar™-winning, script-sifting, next-Nicholson-label-wearing Kevin, and the other is the guy who was in The Usual Suspects and was also good.
Is this the fate Kevin Pollak deserves? When we disengage him from the other Kevin with whom Fate so cruelly twinned him (and, really, only because they more or less rose to prominence at the same time, and both are named Kevin blank-blank), what do we have? Well, it says here we have a pretty damn good character actor, who is greatly underrecognized and sadly underutilized, and who manages, with his acerbic timing and safecracker's cool, to give a jolt to whatever increasingly insipid movie he finds himself in these days, and who really does do an astoundingly good Shatner impression.
I mean, it's one thing to realize that the reason that Benicio Del Toro -- who was also very good in The Usual Suspects -- never took off is because he really does talk like that. It's quite another to pop She's All That in to your VCR after a particularly irritating day and suddenly see Kevin Pollak playing the wise old bromide-spouting dad. Or to catch him hogtied by those rascally ragamuffins who've had quite enough of their bickering parents in House Arrest. How to explain this sad turn of events, other than some calamitous combination of greed and lack of imagination on either Mr. Pollak's part or his agent's, or both?
We're not suggesting that Mr. Pollak should have won two Oscars™ by now, or that whole movie deals should be hinging on whether or not he deigns to take a part, or that he should be hounded by tabloid photographers while cavorting with an unidentified male friend in a private cove. But we ask you, America: Isn't there room for another Kevin in your heart? In fact, we'd like to suggest the following re-ranking of famous Kevins:
- Kevin Spacey (last week #1, this week #1)
- Kevin Kline (last week #3, this week #2)
- Kevin Pollak (last week --, this week #3)
- Kevin Bacon (last week #4, this week #4)
- Kevin Smith (last week #5, this week #5)
- Dropping off the charts: Kevin Costner, last week #2
In other words, don't give Kevin Pollak the world. Just give him a chance.
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