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Is there any more improbable celebrity than Mark Wahlberg? Seeing him in the opening scenes of Planet of the Apes, or smiling out from the cover of Vanity Fair, or striding toward you on the poster for Rock Star, don't you feel, just a little bit, like you've slipped into some alternate reality –- some parallel world in which Marky Mark is a movie star, and Mr. T is hosting The Tonight Show, and Yahoo Serious has won his second Best Supporting Actor Oscar, and Gerrardo has just released a two-CD compilation of his greatest hits?
Or put it this way: if we traveled back in time about ten years and told you that Mark Wahlberg (a.k.a. Marky Mark, commandant of the Funky Bunch) would, a decade hence, not only be a critically lauded actor, but one whose presence in a movie would actually make you more likely to go see it rather than less -- how would you have reacted? Probably much in the same way that you would react if we came up to you today and told you that, in ten years' time, Aaron Carter will win the Nobel Prize for Chemistry.
Yet, here he is: the improbable Mark Wahlberg, movie star. Not only has he managed at least as many hits (Boogie Nights, Three Kings, The Perfect Storm) as misses (The Big Hit, The Corruptor, Planet of the Apes), but, with his latest role in Rock Star, he's established himself as the best actor in Hollywood at portraying everyday people in extraordinary situations. Chris Cole, his character in Rock Star, is essentially Dirk Diggler redux; i.e. a regular guy who suddenly finds himself bathed -- and blinded -- by the spotlight. Watching Rock Star -- an otherwise unremarkable, paint-by-numbers film -- you're suddenly hit by the very surprising revelation that no one, no other actor, could play that part as well as Mark Wahlberg does. Marky Mark. "Good Vibrations." Come on! Come on!
How to explain this strange turn of events? It's instructive to start with the symbiotic relationship that Wahlberg has developed with George Clooney. (And we're talking about the professional relationship, here.) Clooney -- who is an executive producer on Rock Star -- took the young Mr. Wahlberg under his wing after they starred together in Three Kings. While the pairing seemed odd at first, it now makes perfect sense. When Clooney played Batman, he got Chris O'Donnell as his sidekick, but in reality Mark Wahlberg is his perfect Robin.
Like any good duo -- the fat one and the skinny one, the tall one and the short one, the funny one and the straight one -- Clooney and Wahlberg match up so well because each is exactly what the other is not. Clooney is pure movie star: his acting chops are so-so at best, but you can roast s'mores on his charisma. Consider this example: a lot of the criticism of Planet of the Apes centred on Wahlberg's inability to hold the film, and it's true: he seemed downright comatose in comparison to Charlton Heston's scenery-chomping, damn-dirty-ape-cursing hero from the original. Now imagine Clooney in the lead. The movie doesn't get any better (Marky Mark was never the real problem), but George Clooney, with his cocksure air and "trust me" glint, could have anchored that film with one hand in his pocket and the other one making a peace sign.
Like his buddy, Wahlberg has screen presence to burn, but his appeal isn't rooted in charisma -- it's rooted in vulnerability. Do you see how strange all this is turning out to be? Mark Wahlberg -- the rapping, crotch-grabbing, weightlifting, underwear-modeling, Madonna's-gay-dancer-baiting, a-book-to-his- own-penis-dedicating Mark Wahlberg -- has turned out to be the maestro of innocence and vulnerability. And we don't mean the elfin, one-eye-on- the-camera vulnerability of Robin Williams, or the noble, bloated vulnerability of Tom Hanks. When Williams or Hanks play "regular" people, they end up playing the Everyman-with-a-capital-E, and their performances carry a whiff of patronizing anthropology. Wahlberg, at his best (Boogie Nights, Three Kings, Rock Star), comes across like a guy who's won a radio contest and wound up with a part in a movie. His exuberance feels genuine, and when he funnels that honesty into his characters, he gives them authentic inner life that's not shrouded by self-congratulatory good intentions.
In Rock Star, Wahlberg pulls off the onstage swagger, but he's at his best in the quiet moments of aspiration. (The most effective scene in the movie is one in which Wahlberg, at his day job, with his tangle of hair pulled up in a ponytail, patiently explains to a fellow worker how to un-jam a photocopier.) In Three Kings, all of the leads (Clooney, Wahlberg, Ice Cube, Spike Jonze) are very good, but Wahlberg is the only one who feels like he could plausibly be headed back to work as a salesman in an appliance store once the war, and the movie, come to an end. (Clooney, in contrast, looks like Clark Gable on a USO tour.)
When Wahlberg recently appeared on the cover of Vanity Fair, the accompanying article centred on the upcoming remake of Charade, in which he'll play the role originated by Cary Grant. Naturally, the story focused on the his unlikely journey from teen rapper to nouveau leading man -- which makes for great copy but misses the point. He's much too human to be the new Cary Grant. If anything, Wahlberg's developing into a kind of hip-hop Jimmy Stewart, which is a far stranger punchline to the story.
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