Tom Sizemore: Eight Years of Action and Juice

I don’t know when exactly Tom Sizemore’s demons took over his life and destroyed what was fast becoming a remarkable career. Perhaps it’s the old adage that fame can bring out the worst in a person. Maybe what was hiding just below the surface was brought above ground by his astonishingly successful eight year run from 1993-2001. 

What came after that stretch was not just sad, but sordid, and at times reprehensible. I could go through the details of those two decades of erratic and miserable behavior on the part of Sizemore, but those details are out there, and a quick google search will lead you to the darkness that seemed to consume this unusually talented actor. By all means, read them. Get the full story if you are interested.

What is artistically undeniable though, is that eight-year peak. There was a time, however brief, when it seemed like all the A-list directors in Hollywood were coming for Tom Sizemore. Actually, it didn’t “seem” like it, it was exactly like that. Over that very short period of time, Sizemore worked with Tony Scott, Lawrence Kasdan, Oliver Stone, Kathryn Bigelow, Michael Mann, Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, and Ridley Scott. You can do a lot of research through the history of film and find you will have a very hard time coming up with a list like that for most actors in their career, let alone just a piece of it. 

Like most actors, Sizemore toiled away in small roles on film and in television before catching a break. His early credits read modestly. He was “Second mugger” in Penn & Teller Get Killed, “Vet #1” in Born on the Fourth of July, and “Wool Cap” in Blue Steel. However, it didn’t take long for the size of the parts to grow. He acted opposite DeNiro in the underrated Guilty by Suspicion, and had a sizable role in the Wesley Snipes actioner Passenger 57 in 1991.  

But it was 1993 when the magic started to happen. First came Heart and Souls, a sweet “It’s a Wonderful Life-esque” film in which Sizemore played a ghost needing human help (in the form of Robert Downey Jr.) to get over the guilt of not returning a book of stamps he conned out of a young boy. Only when he is able to return the stamps through Downey’s character can he move on to the afterlife. In the days leading up to Sizemore’s own passing, I was surprised to learn how many people held this film dear. Heart and Souls wasn’t a hit, received mostly indifferent reviews, and won no awards, but that’s the magic of movies: they live on and grow, and this film grew in the hearts of many, thanks in great part to Sizemore’s performance.

What came after Heart and Souls were a slew of performances that established Sizemore as one of the great tough guy actors of his generation. The Tarantino penned, Tony Scott directed True Romance gave us our first glimpses of Sizemore’s riveting charisma. In a film with a ridiculously star-studded cast (Walken, Hopper, Gandolfini, Christian Slater, Patricia Arquette, Val Kilmer, Gary Oldman, Samuel L., and Brad Pitt, just to name several) it was Sizemore’s Detective Nicholson and Brad Pitt’s stoner Floyd who stood out the most. As a cop working to take down a major Hollywood producer in a drug bust, Sizemore gives every scene he’s in an electric charge. And man, could that guy ever deliver a line.

When he and fellow detective Nicky Dimes (Chris Penn) get a break in the case and take their findings to their captain, the captain points out that due to the involvement of “dirty cops,” they are going to have to bring in Internal Affairs. Sizemore’s reading of Tarantino’s words could not be more delicious:

“I don’t give a shit who you bring in, captain. You can bring in the state militia, LA Thunderbirds, the ghost of Steve McQueen, ten fucking Roman gladiators. I don’t give a shit, as long as me and Dimes get credit for the bust!”

Of course, you have to see the film to fully appreciate the delivery of those words, but let me tell you, that hit of Sizemore energy left me laughing so hard I was worried I was going to get thrown out of the theater.

The next year brought Sizemore the role of Bat Masterson in Lawrence Kasdan’s epic take on the life of the most famous lawman in the old west, Wyatt Earp. The film was savaged by critics (unfairly to my mind), but Sizemore more than held his own acting across from a peak-level Kevin Costner as the title character. There has been some opinion revision of Wyatt Earp since its disastrous release. Tarantino himself loves it and has declared it superior to the other western covering a smaller portion of Earp’s life, Tombstone, which came out the previous year. Tarantino and I may be in the minority in holding that opinion, but as you might guess, we both are sure we are right.

That same year, Oliver Stone tapped Sizemore to play the truly vile Detective Jack Scagnetti in his polarizing satire Natural Born Killers, starring Woody Harrelson and Juliet Lewis as two lovebird serial killers named Mickey and Mallory. Most people either think it’s a masterpiece or find it repugnant. Personally, I think it’s both. But that repugnance is central to the film’s take on the media, serial killers, and how infamy and fame have but a sliver separating them. Scagnetti’s attempted seduction/assault of Mallory in her jail cell is incredibly grotesque, but the way Sizemore leans into the ugly is what makes the scene so disturbing. The licking of the lips, the lascivious glare, it’s all so bold. Tom Sizemore was willing to go to the worst places in human nature to illuminate his character and to strengthen a film. It’s not pretty, but it is perfect.

1995 would prove to be Sizemore’s greatest year on film with the release of three marvelous films: Kathryn Bigelow’s Strange Days, Carl Franklin’s Devil in a Blue Dress, and Michael Mann’s stone-cold masterpiece, HEAT. Putting all three films together, you get to see the full range of Sizemore’s singular talent. In his finest hours on film, there was always a glint of mischief in Sizemore’s eyes, but that mischief could switch to malice in a split second. 

Strange Days may have been a box office disaster, but this near-future sci-fi film about how technology (particularly virtual reality) has the capacity to ruin our lives by distancing ourselves from what is real feels remarkably prescient now. As a private investigator who may have something to hide, Sizemore steals nearly every scene he’s in, despite the presence of Ralph Fiennes as the lead, and Angela Bassett and Juliette Lewis in support. When the revelation comes and we find out just who Sizemore’s character is, we can easily double-back through the film and find the bread crumbs he laid down before leading us to the film’s climax.  

In Devil in a Blue Dress, Sizemore once again plays a private investigator with a wicked side. As Dewitt Albright, who has been charged with finding a missing white woman in a Black community in post-WWII Los Angeles, Sizemore goes toe-to-toe with the greatest actor of his generation, Denzel Washington, who plays Easy Rawlins in this magnificent adaptation of Walter Mosley’s novel. There is a moment when Albright looks at Rawlins and his eyes deaden, his face becoming like that of a mask. He seems no longer human, but more like a shark, and if Easy doesn’t play along, he will get eaten. It’s all in Sizemore’s expression, and is it ever terrifying.

Then there is HEAT, in which Sizemore plays Michael Cheritto, a member of master criminal Neil McCauley’s (Robert DeNiro) crew. To my mind, Michael Mann’s HEAT is the greatest cops and robbers movie ever made, due in no small part to Sizemore’s performance. And look, this is a film with an extraordinary cast. You have Al Pacino as Lt. Vincent Hanna whose own team is closing in on McCauley’s crew. Who is among these two groups? Well, Team Hanna has Mykelti Williamson, Wes Studi, and Ted Levine. Team McCauley answers back with Val Kilmer, Dennis Haysbert, Danny Trejo, and Sizemore. On the periphery of these cops and robbers stands Jon Voight, Diane Venora, Amy Brenneman, Ashley Judd, William Fichtner, a very young Natalie Portman, and Tone Loc (yes, you read that last name correctly). All of these actors are given at least one moment to shine, but somehow none of them get lost in this sprawling, nearly three hour masterpiece.

Despite this massively talented cast, Sizemore stood out the most to me among the supporting players. There is a great scene where McCauley and his crew meet up at a busy diner to deal with a renegade among their group named Waingro whose overzealousness caused an armored car robbery to go bad. McCauley hears just one excuse out of Waingro’s mouth and grabs the back of his head, slamming it against the top of the table. Another patron looks up from his newspaper, taking a gander over at McCauley’s booth. Sizemore’s Cheritto leans away from the booth, cocks his head ever so slightly, and conveys to the man that there is nothing to see here. The man then returns to his newspaper. It’s just a couple of seconds of screen time, but if the actor isn’t able to convincingly and wordlessly give off the sense of possible violence, the scene would not have worked. Again, it’s Sizemore with that dead-eyed, mask-like expression that rules the moment. 

Two years later, Sizemore scored his first lead role in The Relic, a B-level monster movie that Sizemore made watchable despite the film’s silly premise and weak script. 

1998 would bring to the fore what many would consider Sizemore’s greatest (and certainly most successful) role and film of his career, Steven Spielberg’s legendary WWII movie, Saving Private Ryan. Sizemore plays Sergeant Horvath, second in command to Tom Hanks’ Captain Miller. Miller leads a group of soldiers on a mission to extract a fellow soldier named Ryan (played by Matt Damon) from the war due to both of his brothers having died, and the US military wanting there to be no additional suffering for Ryan’s family. Among their group is Private Reiben (well-played by Edward Burns), who asks too many questions and makes too many challenges to Captain Miller’s authority. To put it mildly, he and the “good soldier” Horvath do not get on well. After taking out a group of Germans, but not without suffering a casualty, Pvt, Reiben crosses the line that he has been bumping up against throughout the movie. He refuses to continue on the mission and effectively declares that he is deserting. Horvath will have none of that. Not only does he put Reiben on his back, but when Reiben rises and states he’s still leaving, Horvath pulls his pistol on him.

Reiben then says “Are you gonna shoot me over Ryan?”

To which a wickedly grinning Horvath replies, “No, I’m gonna shoot ya ‘cause I don’t like ya.”

Somehow, Sizemore makes the moment both funny and frightening in equal measure. That was just one of his many gifts.

After Saving Private Ryan, Sizemore was seen in Scorsese’s Bringing Out the Dead (a movie that deserves a second look from critics) starring Nicholas Cage, Michael Bay’s ridiculous Pearl Harbor film, and in 2001, Ridley’s Scott’s stellar retelling of a disastrous US military mission in Somalia, Black Hawk Down.

Then the abyss opened up under Sizemore’s feet and swallowed him whole. The next twenty plus years of his career were spent largely in movies you’ve never heard of and probably wouldn’t want to see if you did. The only exception over those dreadful two decades was his supporting role in David Lynch’s Twin Peaks: The Return, in which Sizemore appeared in six of the season’s 18 episodes.

Unfortunately, those demons I referenced up front made Sizemore nearly unemployable on A-list projects for the bulk of his thirty-three year career. Make no mistake, Sizemore owns much if not all of the bad that came along and destroyed his reputation, making him tabloid fodder. But he also owns those eight sterling years as well.

One of my favorite lines in HEAT is spoken by Sizemore. As DeNiro’s Neil McCauley lines up his crew to tell them he’s doing one last job (a bank robbery) before he calls it quits, he asks each of his men if they are up for what will be an incredibly high-risk endeavor. When he gets to Sizemore’s Michael Cheritto, McCauley is practically trying to talk him out of going along. He explains to Cheritto that he’s well set up, and that he doesn’t need this caper. Sizemore asks Neil to tell him what to do. Neil refuses, saying it has to be Cheritto’s decision. Sizemore’s face softens for a moment as he ponders, then he lifts his head up, breaks into that patented Sizemore grin, and says, “For me, the action is the juice,” and that he will be going along for the ride.

It’s a ride that ends badly. I suppose if you wanted to get metaphorical, you might say that Sizemore’s life could be summed up as having too much action and juice.

All the good we got from Sizemore came over a period of less than a decade. But man, was it ever good while it lasted.

Tom Sizemore died yesterday. He was sixty-one years old.