Irish actor Colin Farrell became Hollywood’s “it boy” way back in 2000 when he burst onto the scene as Bozz in Tigerland. Not many people went to see Tigerland (directed by Joel Schumacher, and easily his best film) when it was released, but everyone in the industry took note of Farrell’s electric performance as a Vietnam draftee who could soldier up when he wanted to, but resisted authority so strongly that he was constantly at risk of disciplinary action. Strikingly handsome with off-the-charts charisma, suddenly Farrell was targeted for the A-list.
Farrell’s big shot came in Spielberg’s well-received (but still somehow undervalued) futuristic police action-drama, Minority Report. Farrell went toe-to-toe (both literally and figuratively) with the film’s megawatt star Tom Cruise, and more than held his own. From there, Farrell became a leading man in high-profile projects. The modestly successful thriller Phone Booth came next, followed by The Recruit with Al Pacino, a hilariously over-the-top performance as Bullseye in Ben Affleck’s ill-conceived Daredevil film, and then S.W.A.T., a remake of the ‘70s TV show, where Farrell traded lines with Samuel L. Jackson. While all four of those films did at least respectably at the box office, only Phone Booth holds up at all.
Farrell seemed to grasp that he was appearing in films that were essentially product, and retreated from big budget action films for his next two projects, A Home at the End of the World and Intermission. Neither film was well seen, but they did showcase the width and depth of Farrell’s range. As the sweet and sensitive Bobby in Home, Farrell plays a young man caught up in an unusually complicated love triangle with a gay man (Dallas Roberts) and his companion (Robin Wright). The film never quite comes together, but Farrell is incredibly affecting, especially as he decides to take care of Roberts’ AIDS-afflicted character in his final days. Intermission is a high-octane Irish ensemble film (co-starring Cillian Murphy, Kerry Condon, Colm Meaney, and Kelly Macdonald among others) with Farrell playing a budding psychopath who punches not one, but two women in the face over the course of the film. He also sings a wonderfully off-key punked out cover of “I Fought The Law” over the film’s closing credits. As lovely as Farrell is in Home, he is equally dastardly in Intermission. And let me just say, Intermission is a real keeper. The film plays a bit like a second level Trainspotting (which is still pretty damn good).
After making those two smaller films, Farrell went big with his next five films, aligning himself with a quintet of legendary filmmakers: Oliver Stone, Terrence Malick, Robert Towne, Michael Mann, and Woody Allen. Sadly, all of those films were met with puzzled reactions from critics, and underwhelming box office grosses at the the theater. Stone’s bold, but ludicrous telling of the story of Alexander the Great (with Farrell as Alexander) was one of the biggest flops of 2004. If anyone remembers anything from it, it’s the hysterical sex scene between Farrell and Rosario Dawson where wildcat sounds were pumped in on the soundtrack as Farrell chased Dawson around the bed. Robert Towne’s Ask The Dust may have fared worse by hardly being remembered at all, and Woody Allen’s Cassandra’s Dream was a misfire sandwiched between Allen’s terrific Match Point and his wonderful Vicky Cristina Barcelona.
While Alexander, Ask the Dust, and Cassandra’s Dream could be considered underachievers (or worse) from a critical standpoint, Malick’s The New World (with Farrell as John Smith and Q’orianka Kilcher as Pocahontas) has grown into a film that many now see as a classic. Likewise, Mann’s Miami Vice (adapted from the iconic ‘80s TV show Mann created) has also grown in esteem. At the time of Vice’s release, the film was deemed a misfire. I suspect many were thinking they were going to get something closer to the series, which, while darker than most shows at the time, was comparatively breezy when held up against Mann’s grim feature film, starring Farrell and Jamie Foxx as undercover detectives Sonny Crockett and Ricardo Tubbs. As well, Farrell had lost a lot of heat after Alexander, The New World, and Ask the Dust. In the course of just a handful of projects, he went from next big thing to whipping boy. The fact that Film Stage named Miami Vice the best action film of this century just three years ago didn’t do a thing for Farrell in 2006.
You’d be hard-pressed to criticize Farrell’s choices in taking on those five films, but after they all opened and closed in short order, Farrell was pushed from the spotlight and forced to regroup. His long-running comeback started with Martin McDonagh’s fabulous first film In Bruges. Playing across from the mighty Brendan Gleeson, the two perfectly matched thesps played hit men sent away to Bruges by their boss (a menacing Ralph Fiennes) after a hit involving Farrell’s character goes terribly wrong. If ever an actor was meant to spout the wonderfully worded lines of McDonagh, it was Colin Farrell. Giving the performance of his life (at least up until then), Farrell invests his crestfallen assassin with pathos, humor, and soul. In Bruges may not have been more than an indie hit at the time, but critics (rightly) gushed over it, and Farrell even won the Golden Globe for best actor in a comedy.
For many actors, rebounding with a heavy statue raised up high might have been a springboard back to the A-list, but that was not the case for Farrell. He continued to toil away under the radar, and even the good films he made over the next few years went unseen (Neil Jordan’s gritty enchanting mermaid story Ondine, and Peter Weir’s The Way Back barely made a ripple). Farrell did have a lovely small part as a famous country singer (Farrell shows off some solid singing chops in the film) in Crazy Heart, the film that delivered Jeff Bridges his first Oscar.
Farrell then made some more mainstream choices over his next few films. He showed off his comedy chops as an office manager in the smash hit comedy Horrible Bosses, and wryly played the vampire next door in the remake of Fright Night (which I will contend to the death as being superior to the original). Unfortunately, a miserable remake of Total Recall followed along with the incoherent action film Dead Man Down. The one bright spot between those twin disasters was Farrell’s second film with Martin McDonagh, Seven Psychopaths. But even that very entertaining film paled in comparison to In Bruges.
Farrell seemed snakebit. When he worked with great directors, the films were often seen as disappointments, and many of the smaller films he made didn’t gain an audience. But Farrell kept plugging away. He scored a solid supporting role in Saving Mr. Banks, did fine work across from Jessica Chastain in Miss Julie (Liv Ullman’s film of the August Strindberg play), and then made an art-house splash with Yorgos Lanthimos’ The Lobster from 2015, which saw Farrell bulk up to schlub-level in an absurdist tragi-comedy that made many a ten best list. Despite Farrell’s performance being singled out in The Lobster, the larger awards did not come calling. But it did make people see Farrell differently. He had suddenly become a “character actor” (as hoary as that term is) with leading man looks.
Over the next six years, Farrell found his footing by embracing his new status, not giving a damn (or at least it would seem) about the first weekend grosses, and taking part in nothing but top-flight projects. Not all of them worked of course. He was the best thing in True Detective’s roundly (and overly) panned second season, Tim Burton’s Dumbo fell flat, Guy Ritchie’s The Gentlemen was forgettable, and the action film Ava (where Farrell played a villain across from Jessica Chastain’s avenging assassin) disappeared before anyone knew it was released. However, Farrell was tremendous in a very internalized role as a doctor trying to deal with a deeply disturbed teenage boy (a creepy Barry Keoghan) in Lanthimos’ The Killing of a Sacred Deer. He was terrific as the catalyst in Sofia Coppola’s The Beguiled, playing a wounded Union soldier hiding out at a girls school during the Civil War who drives the women of the facility to distraction. He was also lovely in Roman J. Israel, Esq. with Denzel Washington, playing a man who finds his integrity through the actions of Washington’s eccentric title character. His supporting turn as a seedy Chicago politician in Steve McQueen’s fabulous heist drama Widows is worthy of mention, too.
That pretty much brings us up to 2022, in which Farrell gave four remarkable performances in one calendar year. But before I get to that, let’s take a quick overview of his pre-2022 career, and let’s do it this way:
Imagine if a theater decided to hold a Colin Farrell Film Festival based on his work only up until this year. Here are the films I think you might include.
Tigerland
Minority Report
Phone Booth
Intermission
The New World
Miami Vice
In Bruges
Ondine
Seven Psychopaths
The Lobster
The Killing of a Sacred Deer
The Beguiled
Widows
That’s pretty damn impressive. The truth is, we’ve been sleeping on the exceptional work Farrell has done before this glorious year he is currently enjoying.
And what a year it has been. It began with Kogonada’s beautiful futuristic family drama After Yang. The quiet and incredibly compassionate film details the impact on a family after their daughter’s synthetic humanoid sibling, Yang, malfunctions and cannot be repaired. It’s one of the most gorgeously shot films of the year, and Farrell’s sweet, minimalist performance matches the film’s tone perfectly. There is a scene in After Yang that I have not been able to get out of my head. It’s a deceptively simple bit in which Farrell tries to explain to Yang why he loves tea. As Farrell’s downbeat tea maker discusses the art and ritual of tea making, you can see him begin to light up as he talks about what he does and why it’s so important to him. The best moment may be when he’s trying to explain what tea tastes like by parroting a description he heard from a German man in a documentary. When Farrell explains (in an accent so perfect that my wife commented that it sounded just like a German professor she had in college) how tea is like walking through a wet forest, and all the elements there result in its taste, well, I don’t know if I have the words to describe it. Coincidentally, that’s what Farrell says to Yang when first asked about the taste of tea: “I haven’t the words.” While I may not have the words to fully describe what a wonderful film After Yang is, I’m delighted that it appears to be getting pulled along on the coattails of Farrell’s current hot stretch, and will likely be seen more now than it was at the time of its release.
As if to say, “I’ve something altogether other in my pocket to show you now,” Farrell’s next release of 2022 was The Batman, in which he played one of the caped crusader’s nemeses, Oz, AKA: The Penguin. Buried under more latex and makeup than any actor in recent memory, Farrell wasn’t just unrecognizable by appearance, the voice he created for the part doesn’t sound anything like the actor at all. I remember seeing The Batman in the theater with a close friend, and after the Penguin’s first scene, I turned to my friend and said, “Did you know that’s Colin Farrell in that part?” To which he looked at me incredulously and replied, “Somehow?!” As you might guess, the Penguin is a showy part of a comic book villain, but neither Farrell nor director Matt Reeves ever let this iteration of the Penguin turn into the silliness of previous versions. This Penguin is a grotesque crime lord with a dark sense of humor, and Farrell, quite literally, disappears into the role.
Veering completely in the other direction, Farrell’s role in Ron Howard’s solid true-life rescue drama Thirteen Lives could not have been any more utilitarian. There are some films that simply ask you to play “the guy” and nothing more. These can be really tricky parts that don’t give an actor the so-called “big scene,” and therefore, not register strongly with the audience. But as a cave diver trying to rescue twelve boys and their coach caught in a flooded cavern, Farrell adds subtle notes of eccentricity as the rescuer John Volanthen, while being sure to never get in the way of a story that is almost completely mission-focused. It could have easily been either a nothing performance or the type where you can see an actor straining to add more colorful notes than are necessary. Farrell perfectly rides the line between too much and not enough, and the film is all the better for it.
We now come to the crown jewel of Colin Farrell’s extraordinary year: Martin McDonagh’s The Banshees of Inisherin. If you pay any attention to film at all, you know (or at least have heard) how good Farrell is as Padraic, a kind, “limited man” living in an Island off the coast of the Irish mainland where a civil war threatens to tear the country in two. Padraic takes little interest in anything beyond the care of his animals, his love for his sister (a luminous Kerry Condon), and his daily pints with his best friend Colm (played by the great Brendan Gleeson). Padraic’s little world is turned upside down when Colm suddenly decides he no longer wants to be friends with a man who has so little of interest to say, and cruelly dismisses their years-long relationship. The great screenwriter William Goldman once (in)famously said when considering his Oscar ballot that he had one rule: “No ret*rds, no drunks.” And while I don’t defend his use of a pejorative when referring to the mentally challenged, I do understand what he meant. Playing characters who have either condition can give an actor a lot of room (often too much) to overplay and get away with it because of the easy tools at their disposal.
What Farrell has to do here is play a man who isn’t stupid, he’s simple and kind. He has to be just intellectually short of smart while not going so far away from a basic level of intelligence that he seems like someone who is struggling to function. Padraic isn’t struggling to function, he’s struggling to understand how a person he has been close to for years could reject him so strongly as to say that they will cut off their own fingers if Padraic even speaks to him. The scene in the bar when Padraic confronts Colm and suddenly comes to the realization that maybe Colm was never a nice person at all is absolutely heartbreaking. The only true solace Padraic finds in the film is through his animals (particularly his miniature donkey Jenny). When unintended harm is caused to one of his animals by Colm, Padraic explains to a stunned Colm that he will be coming to Colm’s house later that day to burn it to the ground whether Colm is inside or not. The only grace he offers Colm is a warning of the exact time, so Colm can leave his dog outside.
The film closes shortly after this event, with the two former friends on the beach. When Colm thanks Padraic for looking after his dog, Farrell’s perfectly modulated response (a combination of deep ache and an effort to hold out hope for a reconciliation) a simply stated, “Anytime” is spoken with such beauty and pain, I can barely think about it without having to collect myself.
Colin Farrell has been at it in this profession for more than a quarter of a century now. He has often done exemplary work in fine films that have either not been widely seen, or were unfairly derided at the time of their release. But this year, it all finally came together. Farrell went four for four in 2022 in terms of giving great performances in quality films. It’s a foregone conclusion that Farrell will be nominated for best actor by the Academy for his lead performance in Banshees. When that happens, it will be his first nod from the Oscars. Hell, he may well be the favorite to win.
That’s not what’s most important, though. What’s more significant is the reassessment of his career that is happening due to his most recent accomplishments. There was a time when Farrell was an actor who was laughed at, who was considered a cautionary tale of what happens when an actor gets too much too soon. Now, looking back, we realize the Colin Farrell we watched with such intent this last year is the same Colin Farrell who has, more often than not, been very good to great on a consistent basis for the whole of his career.
The other night I was watching Miami Vice again in preparation for this write-up. As the film closes, Colin Farrell walks out of a pitch-black night and into an open door full of light. It struck me just then, that Farrell is no longer in the darkness. He is walking in the light now, and this time, he can’t be missed.