When you’re about 6-foot-5, actors like Tom Noonan’s imposing size were mostly cast as villains and antagonists. Yet his dual role in Last Action Hero both as The Ripper and himself showed that deep down he was just a regular person who got the acting bug and went with it.
His brother, John Ford Noonan, was an actor and playwright himself. And his father was a jazz musician. So, it was only natural he would turn to acting. He appeared in the notorious flop Heaven’s Gate as a rapist. But then one of his most iconic roles would be as Francis Dollarhyde, aka The Tooth Fairy, a twisted serial killer in Michael Mann’s classic crime thriller Manhunter, based on the Thomas Harris novel Red Dragon. The movie bombed but critics praised it. Thanks to the popularity of CSI, which featured the movie’s protagonist Willam Petersen in the main role, and The Silence of the Lambs, it found its audience later.
Noonan would go on to play Frankenstein’s Monster in The Monster Squad for once actually playing a gentle giant who helps a circle of young friends fight Dracula, The Wolfman and the Mummy. Then there was his role as the drug-dealer/crime boss in Robocop 2. The movie was excessively violent and lacked most the dark humor that made the first one so popular. It’s divided fans since it was released in 1990.
In the 1990s, Noonan rode the independent movie craze (What Happened Was... and The Wife) by writing and directing his own movies to portray himself in a different light. Yet, when he was cast in Sean Penn’s brilliant psychological thriller The Pledge, you could see he took it almost as an opportunity to again showcase there was more to him than just playing psychos. Noonan plays Gary Jackson, a pastor who lives in the Nevada northern countryside near Reno and Lake Tahoe, who becomes a suspect of a serial killer targeting children.
It’s a supporting role but it there are no small roles, only small actors. The Pledge opened in the winter of 2001 to rave reviews but it bombed at the box office no doubt due to its bleak ending. Yet, it just shows how Hollywood movies have become so conventional that audiences expect them to follow a pattern but hate the constant patterns at the same time because they have become cliched.
Jerry Black is a Reno Police detective who has retired. At his retirement party, he leaves with fellow detectives Stan Krolak (Aaron Eckhart) and Strom (Dale Dickey) when they received word of a murdered girl up in the snow-covered countryside. Jerry takes up the task to notify the girl’s parents, played by Michael O’Keefe and Patricia Clarkson, and they react just the way any parent would.
The mother, Margert Larson, makes Jerry swear on her daughter’s own cross to catch the killer. And at first, the police think they have the right person as a teenage boy out on a snowmobile recognizes a Native American, Tobey Jay Wadenah (Benicio Del Toro), running from the area horrified. He’s arrested and is a convicted sex offender.
During interrogation without a lawyer, Stan manages to use Wadenah’s developmental disabilities to make it appear he’s confessing to her murder. Yet, Jerry watching the interrogation believes Wadenah is confused as he’s actually speaking of his previous sex crime. As he’s been transferred to the county jail, Wadenah steals a deputy’s gun and shoots himself.
The police are satisfied but Jerry has his doubts. He continues to investigate the cause but Stan and his former supervisor, Eric Pollack (Sam Shepherd), say the case is closed. Jerry takes a fishing trip but discovers there’s a gas station near where the girl was murdered and the killer who was referred to as “The Wizard” probably stops to fuel up.
So, Jerry uses his retirement savings to buy the gas station which has living quarters. But then in the second half he befriends Lori (Robin Wright), a bartender running from an abusive relationship, and becomes attached to her young daughter, Chrissy (Pauline Roberts), who sees Jerry as her father figure.
And as Lori and Chrissy move in with Jerry, he becomes more attached to them. Yet, he can’t fight the obsession “The Wizard” is still out there especially when Jackson sees Chrissy playing and stops to talk with her. And when the first time Jerry sees Jackson, he smiles pleasantly and says “God bless.” Jerry has his doubts as Jackson is tall as he discovers writings that the murdered girl had mentioned “The Wizard” was a tall man.
I don’t mean to give too much more away. But The Pledge, like Se7en and The Lovely Bones, is more about character study than a cat-and-mouse thriller. Nicholson was 63 when this movie was released. And for about 20 years, he had become “Jack,” a wildman character who always commands center stage in every scene he’s in. I’d argue it’s probably a companion piece to his performance as a border patrol officer in The Border. Nicholson is one of those actors who works best when he’s not trying to be the megastar he is.
He’s really only had three periods of his career. There were the Roger Corman years in the 1960s where he mostly appeared in supporting roles as a character actor. Following Easy Rider, he became a star in the 1970s joining other actors as the decade changed. But since Terms of Endearment, he seemed to play a variation on the “Jack” role even as The Joker in Batman and his Oscar-winning role in As Good as it Gets.
Jerry Black is the type of role a veteran hopes they get. And I’d argue to say that if the filmmakers and producers pushed it so hard, he could’ve picked up his fourth Oscar win. He doesn’t have that suave cadence to his voice in other movies. He’s playing a man whose found himself in a world that he no longer remembers.
But I feel Penn who had worked with Nicholson previously on The Crossing Guard wouldn’t bend on the ending. It’s one of those movies like Se7en and Lovely Bones which shows a unpleasant but honest reality to all the crimes in the world. Not everything ends the way we want it. People are punished for their evil crimes but not the way we’d wish to see them.
Maybe audiences were expecting something more with the cameos by Mickey Rourke, Dame Helen Mirren, Vanessa Redgrave, O’Keefe, Clarkson and Harry Dean Stanton. Penn might be a controversial figure but he managed to make a movie that 25 years later still leaves a catharsis with its audience.
And Noonan, like many actors, left his mark and he will be missed.
What do you think? Please comment.
Zane Says 