Performances that are simultaneously brilliant and terrible?

Almost every performance by Al Pacino is like this - I mean I literally could list 10+ and list them recently too - and that's why he's special - when did Paul Newman ever do that? Performances should almost never be unanimously agreed upon - they should baffle and confound and challenge so in some way you should see them always as good and bad and then if they are really great, the good overwhelms the bad entirely.

I refer everyone to the "Vanessa Redgrave" thread and the video clip where Pacino discusses her - it's the best critique of acting, good acting you'll ever see and he specifically references people liking performances that give you exactly what you want and people then calling them "great", wrongly just because they conform to that expectation (he doesn't say "wrongly" but it's clear )

Look at this board, we talk about performances all the time and never really talk about them - we say "powerful", "heartbreaking" or "annoying" - it's an avalanche of meaningless adjectives to me anyway.

Anyway, I'll give you one: Sean Penn in The Assassination of Richard Nixon - one of the most delineated etchings of mental illness you can imagine and one of those that ignores backstory of the character (again, the good is great, the bad is relatively minor)

Tommy Wiseau - The Room. More on the brilliant side imo.

Jesse Eisenberg in Batman V Superman

Piper Laurie in Carrie - genius performance that would come across as a joke in a less inspired film.

Keanu Reeves in The Matrix ... I'm a fan 😀

Patricia Arquette and Eric Lange in Escape at Dannemora. It's the best role of the former's career and the two of them submerse themselves into the part wholly, but I am struggling to think of a pair of more thoroughly reprehensible human beings with absolutely zero redeeming qualities.

I can't say I've ever watched a performance and had a wildly ambivalent reaction. I'll say parts of Oldman in Leon are good acting, and parts aren't, but it's why I'd say it's neither brilliant nor terrible, instead of saying it's both.

I agree with this assessment but do you think aspects of the performance were terrible or just the people they are portraying? I believe OP’s question is referring to just the performances themselves.