2007 Flak Film Also-Ran Awards: The Steak Knives
Second-Best Actor
by Flak Staff

The first installment in a five-part Oscars feature

To be eligible for the Steak Knives, candidates must not have been recognized by the Oscars, the Golden Globes, the Independent Spirit Awards or in the top tier of the IndieWire Critics' Poll. To see the ineligible nominees, click here.

Sacha Baron Cohen
Talladega Nights: The Legend of Ricky Bobby

Sacha Baron Cohen was snubbed by the Academy because his most famous roles — Borat, Ali G, Bruno — are considered more performance art than performance. He gained huge popularity in the United States as much for his performance in Borat as for his performance as Borat in every public appearance thereafter. Who knew America loved an artsy performative gesture? Well, Andy Kaufman did, but Kaufman almost never acted in other people's movies.

In Talladega Nights: The Legend of Ricky Bobby, Cohen plays a gay French Formula 1 racer named Jean Girard. The European foil to Will Ferrell's Ricky Bobby, Girard reads Camus and drinks espresso while racing, entertains Elvis Costello and Mos Def for tea, and keeps as his bride a mincing professional dog trainer played by Andy Richter. Jean Girard outclasses Ricky Bobby in every way. More important, Cohen outclasses Ferrell in his performance.

My love for Will Ferrell is as boundless as the sea. Yet, when set against an actor like Cohen, who plays the outrageous character in the most natural of ways, Ferrell's performance begins to feel like a large, bedazzled cowboy boot to Cohen's well-tailored Italian shoe. His complete honesty in playing Jean Girard shows a real respect for, and intimacy with, the character that makes his absurdities all the more hilarious. Ferrell, making large choices that earn large guffaws in the short term, render the character less interesting, and thus less funny overall.

Cohen has said that a great inspiration of his is Peter Sellers, and he carries that mantle well. The kind of subtlety Sellers finds is rarely seen in a comedy movie of this cloth, but Cohen, like fellow actor John C. Reilly, brings that humanity to Talladega Nights. Sellers played completely absurd characters in the most human of ways, and Cohen invests that same pathos in Jean Girard. Add that to his history of testicular wrestling with a Kazakhstani producer, and you have one of the most versatile comedians of our day. — Aemilia Scott

Jean Reno
The Pink Panther

I know, I know. The Pink Panther? We can really find a second-best-of (not to mention best-of) candidate in a broadly comic mass-market remake? I mean … The Pink Panther?

Consider this: While it is what it is, Pink Panther was a package of exceptional comedic performances by a pair exceptional comedic actors (Steve Martin, Kevin Kline). The funny stuff was covered. As is typical of a comedy, the balance of the cast is forced into either caricature (Emily Mortimer, Henry Czerny) or straight-man (Beyoncé Knowles, Jean Reno), and this is where Reno earned his keep.

Detective Gilbert Ponton, Reno's character, was indistinguishable from Detective Bezu Fache, his character in The Da Vinci Code, the "other" Reno movie in 2006. In Pink Panther, though, while Clousseau hit the laugh notes, Ponton was tasked in moving a murder/theft investigation — in other words, the whole movie — forward. Can you imagine doing this while Steve Martin performs the good cop/bad cop bit … by himself?

Reno's straight-man work was flawless, even in the most absurd situations. Because he took every piece of the Clousseau adventure as a core component to successful investigation, Ponton didn't crack for a second — during the fart jokes, during the innuendo, even during the interpretive dancing while decked out in unitards. As a result, every time Ponton doesn't smile and doesn't laugh becomes just about the funniest thing you'll see. Here is a man fully willing to subscribe to chauffering a buffoon around in a Smart car for the sake of the investigation. Now that's funny. — Andy Stilp

Brandon Routh
Superman Returns

Brandon Routh, a relative unknown, was cast as Superman in the character's first big-screen outing in 19 years, but Superman Returns director Bryan Singer gave Routh a role beyond just that of the ultimate Boy Scout. He asked Routh to be Supes as played by Christopher Reeve in the Superman movies of the '70s and '80s — hence Superman Returns. Reeve is the Superman most people visualize when they hear the corny name. He was the last Superman, the tragic Superman who broke his neck in a horseback riding accident and spent nine years as a driven, philanthropic quadripilegic. And Superman Returns didn't do anything to change his status as the actor everyone associates with the role, since Routh played the role of Christopher-Reeve-as-Superman to perfection.

Too bad for Routh. He's obviously a good actor. He nailed Reeve's ultra-geeky Clark Kent especially well, tripping, bumbling, acting the fool for his Daily Planet co-workers' benefit. Alternately, his modest, soft-hearted, slightly sad but super-confident Superman was as perfect as Superman himself. Reeve caught Supes in a way he hadn't been seen before. He wasn't a flying god who bent a few steel bars here and there; he was as human as the rest of us. He loved his parents. He questioned his place, his powers. He fell in love with Lois Lane, his adopted planet and all of its occupants. Routh couldn't be a better understudy. He stared out of the screen through Reeve's soft, loving eyes. It wasn't Brandon Routh who promised to be there for us — no, it was Christopher Reeve once again. In all ways Brandon Routh ceased to be Brandon Routh. He accomplished the actor's dream and transcended himself. Unfortunately (for Routh) he wasn't given the opportunity to transcend Reeve — which you would think was the whole point of the exercise — and it's hard to tell just how good of an overall actor he is after seeing a single dead-on impersonation. But he'll get his chance to shine on his own merit … unless he ends up as typecast as Reeve did, which is more than a possibility, since Superman Returns Returns is already in the works. — Chris Shadoian

Ken Watanabe
Letters from Iwo Jima

Ken Watanabe was introduced to American audiences when he completely stole The Last Samurai from Tom Cruise. Watanabe's role was conceived as a Noble Savage, bestowing gifts of enlightenment and inner peace on a world-weary white guy. But something funny happened: Even amongst all the falling cherry blossoms that represented his Zen nature or whatever, Watanabe created a fully formed character. Sure, he embodied the chaste ancient wisdom of the samurai in his kimono, but Watanabe expressed a certain worldly sensibility that made his connection with the white man transcend the material. If the character had been played by, say, Pat Morita, he would have just spouted some pseudo-zen nonsense and breathed deeply a lot. But Watanabe calibrated his reactions to Cruise: wry smiles, knowing glances and icy stares, rather than the simple stone-faced stoic stereotype. The isolated samurai emerged as the more worldly character. His arc is a journey from one world to the next: His honorable loyalty to the ways of the old gradually transforms into a grudging acknowledgment of change, resulting in a principled, futile and ultimately tragic defiance of modernity.

Here, Watanabe has much the same task. He plays General Tadamichi Kuribayashi, the American-educated general assigned to defend Iwo Jima. He's ordered to fight to the death because the island is considered Japanese soil. After quickly realizing that the Americans will overtake them, Kuribayashi's real battle is not with the Americans, it's with his feelings for the Japanese soldier's code of honor. As with Tom Cruise's band of samurai brothers, Watanabe has to bridge the gap between the honor of ritual suicide and his Western-learned notion of the honor of survival. The trick is that Watanabe has to give off an air of sophistication that reveals the Western influence on his Eastern upbringing. When the soldiers call him an American sympathizer for wanting to retreat and regroup, we understand why they say it. When others see him as a savvy tactician, we understand that as well. Increasing the degree of difficulty, Watanabe doesn't get to deliver a rousing battlefield pep talk or thrust his sword skyward in a defiant charge at the enemy. He builds this character almost entirely underground in the tunnels under Iwo Jima — as if he is burrowed into the deep recesses of the modern Japanese soul. — Stephen Himes

Bruce Willis
Fast Food Nation

Occasionally an actor will get it so right that a tiny role will outshine almost everything else, even in an otherwise good film: Mickey Rourke's debut as "rock 'n' roll arsonist" in Body Heat, Stephen Root as the (similarly incendiary) Swingline-obsessed paper pusher in Office Space, Joanna Cassidy as doomed snake-dancer in Blade Runner. Bruce Willis, dropping the trademark smirking wisecrack, has a fine little shooting-star turn in Fast Food Nation. There he plays that difficult thing, the sympathetic devil (or perhaps compassionate conservative?) counterpointing Greg Kinnear's earnest/naïve corporate flunky. Kinnear's man comes to town for a showdown with Willis' Harry Rydell, the apparent villain of the piece, the man who's been buying feces-tainted beef for the Mickey's hamburger empire. Rydell all but laughs in his face. While seducing a waitress and eating a burger, Willis gives a very carefully modulated little speech about who has whom by the short hairs, the harsh economic realities of globalization, the dreams that drive immigrant labor and the way grown-ups realize everybody eats a little shit. It's simple, seductive, cerebrally disturbing and pulled off with real sprezzatura. Like so much in this odd little film, it exploits one's expectations for surprise. — David Essex

Second-best Actress
Second-best Screenplay
Second-best Director
Second-best Picture