The leading man that never was continues to contribute banal performances to insipid films. He should really be paid by the hour whatever the minimum is. He guarantees nothing to the success of a picture. The slightly agape mystified look use to work as a younger actor but the expression now in his dotage looks like momentary dementia.
shareWhile I agree that he's not A-list leading man material (a la Pitt, Clooney, Pacino, DeNiro) I actually like watching him play that slightly agape faced mystified man child. It suits him well, just like depressive cerebral misanthrope fitted Philip Seymour Hoffman, or goofy off-center schlub fits Paul Giamatti it has more to do with his choice of roles and the creators behind those roles/stories.
He's just in the same boat as many other credible leading actors who take any role given to them without thought.
Hoffman and Giamatti have far more range than Cusack and the performances prove it. Cusack is more Clooney, a handsome guy delivering lines that make you listen but for me he fails to stretch, a typecast leading man without much lead.
shareI completely disagree.
My point about Hoffman and Giamatti is that they deliver performances that reflect a bit of themselves which in essence is a form of type casting. Cusack's been in some crappy movies, yes but I don't think he's lacking in his acting range by any measure.
Your point is shared by all actors. Let me know when Cusack does a Capote, Before the Devil Knows your Dead, Doubt, Cinderella Man or Sideways. Critically the one note Cusack's "greatest" performance is High Fidelity, a film about a guy stuck in extended adolescence, quite a stretch since it just about sums up his career. He had the looks and swagger to always get the girl but incapable (especially like the remarkable Hoffman) of stretching beyond A to B.
shareI totally get what you're saying and I agree that he's played some very similar (variations on the real John Cusack probably) characters over the course of his career but it always seems to me that he doesn't WANT to be the 'leading man' type but is kind of stuck with it because that's all people think he can do, or WANT him to do. I don't mind the early films (that got him into this mess in the first place) or the ones where he does 'leading man' in something worth watching but he does try to break out of his 'typecasting' wherever possible I think. In darker pieces like Being John Malkovich or The Ice Harvest you get a glimpse of something a bit deeper but still in an acceptable 'hollywoodised' package. More recently he's broken his mold more spectacularly in VERY dark roles in Frozen Ground, The Paperboy and Maps to the Stars. It seems like he's being selectively allowed to do the roles that he'd probably have liked to do earlier but was considered 'too pretty' for, these days. Good for him. I look forward to seeing what he does next (unless it's one of the trade-off straight to DVD things of course - he's still fun to watch in those but they are usually such a mess).
share"Clooney, a handsome guy delivering lines that make you listen but for me he fails to stretch, a typecast leading man without much lead"
Totally agree! I find Cusack way better as an actor than Clooney, though. I wouldn't really compare them, due to the fact that Cusack never had the praise that Clooney had (he has a freaking oscar...).