John Hurt's performance
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koffeenkreame41-1 — 11 years ago(November 09, 2014 06:23 AM)
I agree, John Hurt is wonderful in everything I've seen him in. I especially love the scene when Billy thinks he's getting out, and he tells him he'll come back for him, and kisses him on the forehead. The expression on Hurt's face is heartbreaking..
Yes, it was.
Brilliant actor, terrific performance.
"I'm the ultimate badass,you do NOT wanna f-ck wit me!"Hudson,Aliens -
ss336 — 13 years ago(February 08, 2013 08:57 AM)
I don't think it's fair to judge this actor based on his performance in Midnight Express. This was in my opinion his best performance ever. He didn't do so well in 1984, The Commissioner, or his other films. That's not to say he's a bad actor. Just that this seemed to be the role made for him.
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ss336 — 13 years ago(February 10, 2013 06:22 PM)
I haven't seen The Elephant Man but as you bring up TTSS, I think that's a more representative showcase of Hurt's acting skills. He has skills and from his movies it's clear he is a well trained, good actor. However for me there is a wall of impenetrability about both his face and his voice. It's often very difficult to pick up the feelings he's trying to transmit to the audience. I don't think I'm the only one who thinks that. By contrast, in Midnight Express he plays the part perfectly. In fact he fits so easily into that mold of the intelligent but depressed hash-smoking hippy that with his acting he paints with consummate skill a very interesting, tragic and believable figure. His despair is portrayed as the sobering bridge between the imagined (humane and tolerant) Orientalist paradise of the (imagined) (Near) East, and the grim reality (or rather, as others have pointed out, unreality) of Turkey in the modern world. While the director's vision was extreme and unrepresentative of Turkey today, Hurt sells it really well. Without him in this movie we would be significantly more detached from our empathic sense. When he's trying to be more-English-than-English, as happens so often in movies where he's the main character, it's just not great.
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rrb — 11 years ago(December 05, 2014 09:20 PM)
I think he is such an underrated actor and deserves to have won an Oscar by now.
I don't know underrated - he's widely respected in the industry. He just isn't a big star, which I don't think the British care that much about.
He certainly is beyond Oscar-worthy. Unfortunately his best-known Hollywood efforts - Midnight Express and The Elephant Man - were overshadowed by the titanic performances of Christopher Walken in The Deer Hunter and Robert DeNiro in Raging Bull, respectively.
What I do not understand is why this man does not have a knighthood. Perhaps, like Redgrave and Scofield, he turned it down.