Director/Actor Best Film #12: Scott & Crowe

Gladiator. It is the perfect marriage of material and movie star, and the fact that it wasn't even fully written at the time they started filming it and they managed to pull off a modern-day classic that revived a long-dead genre is astonishing. I mean, come on.

This reminds me, anybody else hoping for a resurgence and another great run from Crowe? One of the great leading men/movie stars of the 21st century, it seems like as time moves along he’s getting a little lost to the past. It might just be me, but I think he has another run in him if the fire for him comes back. He feels like an actor that should have 5+ Oscar noms when his career is done.

The thing is, I think Crowe's been giving great performances since his heyday. The Nice Guys shows that he is one of the greatest straight men in modern comedy; every time I rewatch it I notice him more and more, and though he isn't as flashy as Gosling is, their dynamic doesn't work without Crowe giving 100%. The spit-take scene in the restaurant might be the single best moment of Crowe's whole career, and I mean that as a huge compliment. He lends gravitas to The True History of the Kelly Gang and Boy Erased, and I think he is insanely entertaining in both Unhinged (a movie that does not deserve the performance he's giving in it) and The Pope's Exorcist (again, I want a Benoit Blanc-style series with this character).

Hell, I've even said that I don't even think he's a bad Javert in Les Miserables. His singing isn't very good (but frankly, I think Jackman's not much better as I feel he's the wrong range for Jean Valjean, and I kinda like that Javert's not good at singing in the film because he's such a restrictive character), but his performance and presence are actually very good for the role.

In short, I think that Crowe's bad boy antics really did hurt him at the critical time of his career, as I think without them, he probably gets nominated for Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (I've said before that him missing for that film's otherwise dominant showing can only mean that voters were turned off by Crowe specifically on that front), possibly Cinderella Man, and he might even make a dent for something like 3:10 to Yuma (which I think is a phenomenal performance that gets overlooked when talking about Crowe's heavy-hitter roles). Unfortunately, I think Crowe's rep will always have those dents in them, which is a shame because I think as he's aged, he's become a really compelling character actor and he's fully capable of much more than people give him credit for. We were denied six Aubrey/Maturin movies and an equal amount of Nice Guys spinoffs.

AG and IDGAF what you T

Are Crowe and Scott on bad terms?

No, I think they just came to a mutual realisation that their partnership had gotten stale ( after Body Of Lies & Robin Hood, which both got low critics scores when they were expected to be prestige films & potential award contenders) and just decided to go off and do their own thing.

Crowe has talked about him and Scott still hanging out and talking with each other. They are friends. I think Crowe even visited the Gladiator 2 set in Malta.

They may work together again one of these days.

Gladiator, and it ain't no contest.

Who the fuck voted for Robin Hood...

Nice story of Scott testing Crowe on the set of Gladiator.