Thelma Adams: Novelist, Critic, Oscar Expert

Thelma Adams, Oscars, Playdate, Marie Claire, Movie Reviews, Interviews, New Releases, New York Film Critics, Celebrities, Personal Essays, Parenting, Commentary, Women, Women\'s Issues, Motherhood

MENUMENU
  • HOME
  • BOOKS
    • The Last Woman Standing
    • Playdate
    • Bittersweet Brooklyn
  • WRITINGS
  • MEDIA
  • EVENTS
  • BLOG
  • ABOUT
  • CONTACT

Inside Kevin Costner and Woody Harrelson’s Bromance in ‘The Highwaymen’

March 28, 2019 By Thelma Leave a Comment

I never envisioned Kevin Costner and Woody Harrelson as the stuff of bromance, two great tastes that go great together like chocolate and peanut butter or rum and coke. But, in Netflix’s new movie The Highwaymen that premiered at SXSW over the weekend, and will begin to stream on March 29th, the manly movie stars get bromantic as retired Texas Rangers Frank Hamer and Maney Gault who tick off the miles together in a cherry vintage sedan in pursuit of lover law-breakers Bonnie and Clyde.

The Highwaymen rides in on a well-worn track – as the miles increase on the odometer, the friendship takes shape and the men sitting side-by-side discover through a mutual goal that they have more in common than they might have believed during the opening credits. The road bromance has long been a Hollywood staple – and it appears ageless. (And is good for maturing talent: Costner is 64; Harrelson is 57).

The genre doubles the star power of a movie to give it a four-fisted box office boost, or expand the audience reach like a marketing Venn diagram. One recent example is Green Book, which took a critical beating on its way to its crowd-pleasing Best Picture Oscar by serving up Viggo Mortensen and Mahershala Ali packed together in a 1962 Cadillac deVille driving through the hostile South.

Among my favorite vintage road-mances are Bob Hope and Bing Crosby in Road to Morocco and many other roads traveled, Robert Redford and Paul Newman relying on literal horsepower in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and the pairing of grumpy bounty hunter Robert DeNiro and prissy mob accountant Charles Grodin putting each other through hilarious hell on a transcontinental train ride in Midnight Run.

Or take Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, who famously despised each other off-screen, making sweet movie music together in Hollywood or Bust – a movie where Federico Fellini’s sex goddess Anita Ekberg was only a blip between the two male leads.

Great on-screen chemistry between two men is the same genie in a bottle that characterizes a romantic spark. The arc is often one of mutual estrangement if not outright dislike or distrust, followed by a series of trials that test and ultimately strengthen the pair’s bond, and then an acknowledgement that there’s mutual dependence if not outright affection.

Unlike romance, this connection is rarely sealed by a kiss but by a grudging gesture, as it is on the side of that dusty long Texas road at the end of The Highwaymen (no need for spoilers here). Mush is for chick flicks.

And, in the case of The Highwayman, so is direct eye contact. Keep your eyes on the road, dude.

The chemistry works for Costner and Harrelson because in many ways they are actors of contrasting talents.

Still square-jawed handsome if a little stockier, Costner has built a career largely, though not entirely, on leading men parts like Hamer – personified as G-man Eliot Ness in The Untouchables on the hunt for Al Capone, or as the loyal defender at Whitney Houston’s side in The Bodyguard.

Costner is the epitome of the stoic American leading man in the Gary Cooper/Gregory Peck vein, born to play the pack’s strong-but-silent alpha dog. And age has not dimmed this, even if the opportunities are fewer and far between. (Maybe Netflix will fix that).

On the other hand, Harrelson is the more volatile and unpredictable – a character actor who also plays lead. He has a penchant for drunks and thieves in movies like The Glass Castle and Natural Born Killers. But in his moving role as the embattled and terminally ill sheriff in Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri he displays his talent as a powerful ensemble player capable of flying his most intimate feelings in front of the camera.

Because, in this crime drama, they both play older-and-wiser-and-slower characters, there’s an appealing mellowness to their interactions. Harrelson’s Gault is not the full-on crazy of the actor’s earlier career. And yet he’s still the gunpowder to Costner’s flint, the less stable element. His character’s volatility and emotional accessibility ultimately humanizes the stick-up-his-ass aspect to Costner’s Hamer.

That imbalance, that interaction, enables the bromantic chemistry. One doesn’t require music welling up, or a swooping crane shot, to see that these men connect, really connect. And, because they’re manly men with pistols on their hips, love means never having to explain yourself.

One element that separates bromance from romance: the protagonists need never ask that dreaded questions: How do you really feel? In this case, they just nod, spit and drive off in the same direction.

[This column first appeared on RealClearLife.com]

Filed Under: Movies & TV Tagged With: Bonnie and Clyde, bromance, Buddy Movies, Kevin Costner, Movies, Netflix, SXSW, Texas Rangers, The Highwaymen, Western, Woody Harrelson

Don’t Laugh: Comic Actor Jason Segel Deserves an Oscar Nomination

June 26, 2015 By Thelma Leave a Comment

Jason SegelSacrilege! Could Jason Segel of TV’s How I Met Your Mother and Forgetting Sarah Marshall merit a Best Actor nomination? Yes!

Segel’s performance as brilliant but troubled Infinite Jest novelist David Foster Wallace in James Ponsoldt’s The End of the Tour, opening July 31, could be forgotten under the thundering hooves of autumn Telluride and Toronto Oscar vehicles. Think of Chadwick Boseman’s James Brown in Get on Up, an Oscar worthy performance that opened last year on August 1 and was all-but-forgotten in last year’s competitive Best Actor race.

Appreciating the bromantic duet between Segel’s Wallace and Jesse Eisenberg’s (compelling) Rolling Stone reporter David Lipsky for a second time at the Nantucket Film Festival increased my passion for Segel’s performance. He restores Wallace not as that author you should have read (and probably didn’t) but as a brilliant writer who might not have been the most brilliant conversationalist or company.

With very little action, and articulating lines that are often intentionally inarticulate (Donald Margulies wrote the emotionally satisfying script), Segel creates a multi-layered portrait of a petty, generous, dog loving, soul searching, depression coping, American TV addict. His bandana-wearing Wallace struggles to carve out an authentic life in Bloomington, Indiana far away from the Manhattan literary buzz, which his character describes as the sound of egos rising and falling. What’s strong about the performance is that very lack of ego. It doesn’t take long before Segel loses himself in Wallace, alternately charming and antagonizing both Eisenberg’s Lipsky and the audience.

It will be an uphill battle for Segel. And one fought previously by actors who have made their reputations first as comedians: Steve Carell (Foxcatcher), Will Forte (Nebraska), Robin Williams (One Hour Photo), Bill Murray (Lost in Translation), Eddie Murphy (Dreamgirls), Bill Hader and Kristen Wiig (The Skelton Twins), Whoopi Goldberg (The Color Purple) and even Jerry Lewis (The King of Comedy). The buzz that started at Sundance continues here.

Filed Under: Movies & TV, Oscar Race Tagged With: A24, best actor, bromance, depression, Donald Margulies, James Ponsoldt, Jann Wenner, Jason Segel, Jesse Eisenberg, Nantucket Film Fesstival, Novelists, Oscar, Rolling Stone, Writing

Trailer: ‘Last Vegas’

July 18, 2013 By Thelma Leave a Comment

It’s all about the cast: “Last Vegas: Even More Grown Up”

Filed Under: Movies & TV Tagged With: bromance, comedy, Kevin Kline, Last Vegas, Michael Douglas, Morgan Freeman, Robert DeNiro, Trailer

Review: Hall Pass

February 24, 2011 By Thelma Leave a Comment

Hall Pass,Jason Sudeikis,Owen Wilson,SNL,Bromance,Farrelly Brothers,Providence

Tied! Sudeikis (left), Wilson

Us Rating: **

In this far-fetched, mostly unfunny comedy, Christina Applegate and Jenna Fischer give Owen Wilson and Jason Sudeikis a week off marriage to fool around with other women. Directed by the Farrelly Brothers, the flick has gross gags involving penises, pooping and masturbation. One plus: Applegate, as always, shows good comic timing, snarking about the men’s behavior, “This is why the terrorists hate us.”

Filed Under: Criticism, Movies & TV Tagged With: bromance, Christina Applegate, Farrelly Brothers, Jason Sudeikis, Jenna Fischer, movie reviews, Owen Wilson, Providence, Us Weekly

Movie Review: The Green Hornet

January 15, 2011 By Thelma Leave a Comment

the Green Hornet, Remake, Seth Rogen, Jay Chou, Comic Book Movies, 3D, Michel Gondry, Cameron Diaz, Bromance

Stung!

Us Rating: ***

Seth Rogen shoots a gun — and fires off endless zingers — in this action comedy. He plays an L.A. bachelor who, following his father’s death, starts crime-fighting with his dad’s mechanic, Kato (Jay Chou). The interplay between the Green Hornet and straight man Kato delights, overshadowing Cameron Diaz as a mutual love interest. At least their rivalry inspires the flick’s best scene: a knockdown fight that ends in a pool. It’s even more effective in 3-D!

Filed Under: Criticism, Movies & TV Tagged With: 3D, Action Comedy, bromance, Bruce Lee, Cameron Diaz, comedy, Comic Book Heroes, Cool Cars, Jay Chou, movie reviews, Remake, Seth Rogen, The Green Hornet, Tom Wilkinson, Us Weekly

  • 1
  • 2
  • Next Page »

Copyright © 2023 · Dynamik-Gen On Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in