An appreciation of Pierce Brosnan’s movies: Part 3; Movie star and working actor

Today is the birthday of Pierce Brosnan, he is 58. Happy Birthday, Mr Brosnan.

This article is a revised version of a piece I first published two years ago.

Part 1 deals with Mr Brosnan rise to fame as James Bond and can be found here

Part 3 deals with Mr Brosnan’s masterpieces, the period from 1999 through to 2007, when he made magnificent films like “The Thomas Crown Affair” and “Evelyn” and can be found here

This part also includes references and links to the movies discussed in all three articles.

Having made the break with conventional expectation…..

Seraphim Falls
Brosnan has talked on the record about how he had failed to get roles because he was considered too handsome, too pretty, how Matador and Julian Noble was his answer to that.

In Seraphim Falls he goes to what is for him an unexplored movie style, the western. The movie opens with a cowboy, heavily bundled in furs, cooking a rabbit in a snowy forest. He looks up and we see a hairy, bearded man and realise its Pierce Brosnan. His face looks as if carries all the sorrows of the world. He stands and looks around at the snowy vastness of the Ruby Mountains of New Mexico. All is peaceful; the only sound is the crackle of the fire. As he starts to kneel to his food, a shot ring out and he falls to the ground.

And it is a pretty shocking opener for a western vengeance movie, a chase though the wilderness of America. Brosnan is being tracked by Carver (Liam Neeson), who is obsessed with killing Gideon (Brosnan). Is Gideon the good guy or the bad guy? Should we want Gideon to live or Carver to catch and kill him?

Gideon and Carver (Liam Neeson)

In a way Seraphim Falls is the measure of Brosnan’s work as an actor. A few years earlier we would have assumed that Brosnan is the hero. But now, after The Tailor of Panama and Matador, we just don’t know. I think that he has always calculated his screen persona to have this effect. I think he revels in finding ways to keep it fresh.

Brosnan plays Gideon as a man burdened by a terrible guilt. Once again, a lot of his interpretation is in the physicality of the character. He walks as though pursued by something he cannot shake off. He is always looking inward and his conversations with others are notable for the degree to which he is detached and simultaneously holding some inner dialogue.

Gideon

And here the rage, the power, is in him from the beginning, a rage to live. Gideon wants to live and flees from Carver. Brosnan plays him as a wild animal of man, a soldier, a killer, a mountain man. Gideon is resolute, almost silent, his face locked in a grimace of anger, guilt and a confused desire to survive. Brosnan gives him the walk of some homicidal soldier, marching along, part killer, part beast. And yet when he speaks, his voice is educated, measured and knowing, a soft growl. The voice does not belong to the body; it belongs to another man, another time. This is one of the deliberate contradictions that keep us watching Gideon.

Brosnan plays Gideon as a dried husk of a man, tough as leather, driven onward only by his own indomitable will. He stares but does not see, he kills competently, without remorse, he moves on. Yet, in the company of a simple farming family he weeps with such anguish that that we share his pain, yet we still do not know why he cries. In any other actor this would become tiresome, but this is what Brosnan does so well. His performance is calculated and magical; he shows us how the strength of a man can battle with his inner pain and still function. We understand that Gideon is tied to Carver in some fatal way, but we do not know how. He invites us to come see the crisis, the battle of the self, and like every hero’s journey, we are drawn to know the answer.

With respect to Liam Neeson’s measured and powerful performance, this is Brosnan’s movie. There are long stretches where there is only Gideon and the landscape. We stay with the movie because Brosnan progressively reveals the growing desperation of Gideon, the increasingly desperate stare, the cracking voice, the confusion in him as he recedes from humanity and cannot really understand what people are saying.

Without Brosnan, Seraphim Falls could be just a western chase movie. He elevates it, by giving us a character study that enthrals us, as his story unravels.

Butterfly on a Wheel (“Shattered” in its DVD release)
…is a mystery within a mystery. Gerard Butler (the 300) is Neil Randall, a corporate high-flyer and Maria Bello is his wife Abby. They have a wonderful life, a designer home and a beautiful baby daughter, Sophie. Suddenly a violent psychopath appears in their life. The psychopath is Tom Ryan (Brosnan) a mystery man who tells them he has kidnapped their child and will kill her if they do not do as he says. He then proceeds to wreck their lives.

Tom Ryan is the absolute concentration of anger, hatred and cruelty. Holding their child is frightening enough but it swiftly becomes clear that Ryan is only just this side of sane, and Neil and Abby’s fear that they might tip him over the edge, increases the tension ten-fold.

Tom Ryan taunts his victims

This is a Brosnan master-class. There is no gradual build-up, just an outpouring of anger, hate and control at a colossal level. From the moment he appears on screen, Pierce Brosnan gives a blistering performance of great intensity. Some off this we have seen before, the quickness of an animal, the inhuman stare, the sadistic enjoyment of another human’s plight. Some of it is new, like the unnerving Irish voice, cold, measured but about to slip over the edge into ranting madness. He makes Ryan mercurial, changing mood on the young couple in a split second. Hell, this is scary stuff; you really do not know what is coming next. If Brosnan was evil in the Tailor of Panama and Matador, he was redeemed by the fact that those movies were black comedies. Here he is pure evil, the personification of death, or is he?

Neil and Abby want to know why this man is persecuting them, and for different reasons so do we. Tom Ryan clearly has a motive, but what could it be to drive a man to these extremes of hate? The clue is in the duality that Brosnan plays so well, Ryan is another character under tension from two extreme and opposite forces, and the revelation of these explosive energies is the climax of the movie.

There’s a powerful intuition about Pierce Brosnan’s acting. “Butterfly” is frenetic, high energy, it unfolds at a very fast pace. Brosnan matches it; he is scary because he is fast, physically and mentally quicker than Neil and Abby, outwitting them at every turn. In so many of his movies Pierce Brosnan understands the tempo, the pace and the timing that will make the movie a success. This is one of them.

Married Life
This movie just passed me by, I don’t know how it was marketed, maybe my attention was elsewhere. But I was intrigued by the concept of the movie and glad I caught up with it.

Married Life is set in 1949, and initially centres on a relationship between two friends, two businessmen, stockbrokers I think, in upstate New York. The milieu is the professional middle-class and the requirement back then was for men to dress well for work. So the early scenes are all beautifully cut suits, fedoras and brightly-polished shoes, in bars of polished brass and glossy cherry wood. Pierce Brosnan is one of the few modern movie stars who understand how to wear clothes well, and in that respect alone he is right for the part.

Brosnan is Richard Langley, a handsome, elegant bachelor who is a very successful ladies man. His best friend is Harry Allen (Chris Cross), who is known to be very happily married to a lovely wife. The movie opens with Harry telling Richard that he is having an affair with a young beautiful blonde, Kay Nesbitt (Rachel McAdams) who he loves. Unfortunately, as their lunch ends, Harry chooses to introduce Kay to Richard, who is instantly attracted to her. In that moment, in a very genteel, imperceptibly quiet way, all their relationships start to go to hell.

Richard Langley, man about town.

This is a subtly drawn, intelligent and wryly funny story of a group of friends, whose secrets are exposed and who have to deal with the resulting chaos. It needs actors who understand how to discipline themselves, play their parts like a jazz ensemble, not over-emote. In a stand-out cast, Brosnan is the best, the living heart of the movie. As Richard he has the task of stealing the love of Kay and betraying his friend Harry. But Brosnan refuses to play the role as a conventional cad. His Richard is considerate, softly-spoken and ever so slightly duplicitous. Brosnan’s ability to portray worldly confident men serves him well here, because he simply inhabits that friendly confident grin, the considered aside lightly delivered. Nothing is too visible, too showy, he acts with the lightest of touches.

It is also a cerebral role, with Richard delivering the 50s style narration that holds the movie together. Once again he has a role with two contradictory pulls, though without the intensity of previous roles. Richard is a man and without making a fuss about it the movie delineates the difference between fifties men and modern new age men. Richard is puzzled by his sudden attack of love but rather than spend time analysing it he goes after what he wants, Kay. Brosnan plays Richard as an essentially good man, who will not stop until he has got what he wants. It is the way that Brosnan plays out the set-backs, the embarrassing moments, the final betrayal that gives this film so much of its enjoyment. Watching Brosnan derail Richard’s smoothness, panicky pauses as he tries to say the right thing, the relaxed slouch as he (internally) frantically backpedals is a delight.

Richard Langley and Kay Nesbitt (Rachel McAdams)

The role of Richard suits Brosnan down to the ground, with its style, thoughtful action and quiet good humour. He tackles it with love, verve and quiet dedication. This is an actor at the very top of his game, who knows how to produce an original screen presence and evoke many emotions in the audience, as he leads his character to the story’s culmination. In the final analysis Married Life is a character study, a quietly intelligent movie that asks some very searching questions about being married. Pierce Brosnan gives us a character that is truly worthy of the movie. This is not Bond, not Desmond Doyle, but it is virtuoso acting.

The story up till now…..

So here I am, with my view of Mr Brosnan’s movies. I have been slightly partial and missed out a couple of movies from the last ten years. I have missed out Mamma Mia. I admire Pierce Brosnan for having a punt at it, much as I admire any man who has a go at anything outside his comfort zone. But as a role I do not think it tells us anything about the actor. I have missed out the most substantive movie of the last two years “The Ghost Writer” but i have such as aversion to Tony Blair, real or imagined, that I cannot bring myself to watch it.

A personal plea…

Like many men, I rate the Thomas Crown affair as one of the greatest movies of all time. Also, like many fans of the movie, I have been waiting a long time for Thomas Crown 2. I do not know about all you other men out there but I want that movie. So please Mr Brosnan, make the movie soon!

Anyone who has stayed with me through this long piece will have guessed that I am a fan. But writing this has made me see Pierce Brosnan’s work more clearly and I think it is truly worthy of appreciation.

He is a movie star but more importantly he is a superb actor. He is a great actor because he understands how to give us a character. He does not burst onto the screen and emote for 2 hours. He builds a character, showing him to us bit by bit, building a person and, in the end, we see that character as he does. If some movie stars are one note, Pierce Brosnan is a symphony.

In all of his films he shows an enormous respect for his roles and for the audience. This would not be enough if he did not fill them with life. But he always gives energy to his characters, a truth that makes them very real. But it is his discipline, his hold on the integrity of his characters that make him a superlative actor. He builds characters for us to see and marvel at and that is the one true and best thing that an actor can do.

Thank you very much for your movies Mr Brosnan, they are much appreciated and greatly enjoyed.

Reference Information

Here are movies discussed in the article, in the order in which they appear:

Goldeneye