Gabriel Byrne's over-acting
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Archived from the IMDb Discussion Forums — The Usual Suspects
Joes_Mom — 9 years ago(September 27, 2016 05:21 PM)
I'm not sure if it was poor direction, or just Byrne's interpretation of how Dean Keaton was supposed to act, but the performance was straight out of a paint-by-numbers 'how to act like a tough guy' manual. Just a lot of overkill in how to approached that role
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jbaddock — 9 years ago(September 28, 2016 11:46 AM)
Bear in mind that we're only getting Verbal's description of how Keaton behaved - and he obviously wanted Kujan to believe that Keaton was the boss of the gang, so portraying him as a stereotypical gangster tough guy would help in that respect. Whether Keaton really behaved like that (or even whether Fenster had a speech defect), we'll never really know. Bear in mind that, all through the story that Verbal was telling, Verbal himself walked with a limp - we know that wasn't true - so there might have been no more truth to Keaton's tough guy act than there was to Verbal being a 'cripple'.
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Stratego — 9 years ago(September 28, 2016 02:45 PM)
You don't think it was the (not necessarily poor) direction? I mean, the audience is supposed to believe this guy could be Keyser Soze. As it turns out, it's just a distorted image Verbal painted of him. The whole story kind of gets "over-the-top" once Soze is introduced, hinting at its deceitfulness.
EDIT: I suspect the OP means the word "clich" rather than "over-acting". -
movie_nazi — 9 years ago(October 18, 2016 07:57 AM)
lol I don't get this criticism at all. "Overacted" doesn't come to mind at all when I think of Gabriel's performance.
I agree. A ridiculous notion.
My Vote history:
http://www.imdb.com/user/ur1914996/ratings -
gottaluvafriend — 9 years ago(January 28, 2017 06:28 PM)
I'm not sure if it was poor direction, or just Byrne's interpretation of how Dean Keaton was supposed to act, but the performance was straight out of a paint-by-numbers 'how to act like a tough guy' manual. Just a lot of overkill in how to approached that role
I don't see that at all.