There is, eventually, a gunfight, but the emotional climax belongs, as it must, to Wahlberg, who in the middle of the madness gets a 50-second-long close-up - an eternity in modern moviemaking - in which he does, well, nothing. The scene naturally belongs to Molina, who dances and gestures wildly and waves a gun around while singing along to Night Ranger’s “Sister Christian” as our three heroes sit on the couch, trying not to lose their minds. Consider the immortal scene ( you know the one) where the trio of Dirk, Reed, and Todd Parker (Thomas Jane) attempt to con a shamanically zonked-out drug dealer played by Alfred Molina, who guilelessly terrorizes them with firecrackers casually being tossed around the room by a silent, mysterious companion. The thing I noticed at the time, and that would become even more evident as the years progressed, was that Wahlberg seemed to feed off the competing energies of his co-stars. Reilly as Dirk’s blustery best bud and fellow performer Reed Rothchild, Philip Seymour Hoffman as a mousy, closeted soundman, Julianne Moore as a fragile porn star–slash–den mother, Burt Reynolds as a veteran adult director - Wahlberg not only held his own, but he actually seemed to shine more brightly the better everyone else was. Even though the cast was stacked with brilliant performers - including John C. It’s hard to overstate what a lightning bolt this performance was. Dirk Diggler, Wahlberg has to go from dim-bulb dreamer to fresh-faced newcomer to eager cokehead to jaded cokehead to weary survivor … and he absolutely nails every part of the trajectory. The year after that, Wahlberg would get the break of his life in Paul Thomas Anderson’s Boogie Nights, playing an unassuming, working-class teen who gets roped into the 1970s porn industry and whose stardom waxes and wanes through the subsequent decades. Mark Wahlberg, formerly Marky Mark, in Fear. There’s something hypnotic about this dude’s presence. It’s not just his hunkiness, though he certainly looks great. We can tell he’s up to no good, but we can’t help but be drawn to the guy. It’s not the greatest of films, but the two leads are wonderful in it - you could tell they were both headed for stardom - and Wahlberg is the main reason we keep watching. (“Mark Wahlberg,” they would intone sarcastically, suggesting that his daring to start using his last name was some sort of affectation.)īut I was taken with the actor’s vital sense of menace, that same weirdly dangerous charisma Wahlberg would mine in his subsequent turn as a charming bad boy who seduces Reese Witherspoon and then terrorizes her family in James Foley’s across-the-tracks romantic thriller Fear. I soon learned that this young man was Marky Mark, he of the Funky Bunch, whose rap career had blossomed into an underwear-modeling career, which was now becoming a movie career, which was in turn being met with some suspicion by my friends. Here was an explosive firebrand who didn’t have a lot of screen time, but whose genuine intensity pretty much made a mockery of DiCaprio’s actorly indulgences. ![]() ![]() Instead, what stayed with me from The Basketball Diaries was one of the other guys - a young performer who played one of DiCaprio’s basketball teammates. ![]() After a couple of high-profile supporting turns, this, we were told, would be DiCaprio’s real star moment - the movie that would prove this young performer was here to stay.Īlas, The Basketball Diaries was terrible, and DiCaprio, even though he ultimately would fulfill that early promise, was terrible in it, doing what seemed like a very good impression of an actor doing a very bad impression of Marlon Brando. I’ve actually been concerned for several years, but after seeing his new Netflix movie Spenser Confidential (which prophetically went straight to streaming a couple of weeks ago), I cannot stay silent any longer.įirst, some context: In the spring of 1995, my senior year of college, I scored an invite to an early screening of a new film called The Basketball Diaries, starring a promising young actor named Leonardo DiCaprio, who had just the previous year been nominated for an Oscar for his turn in What’s Eating Gilbert Grape. ![]() Guys, I’m worried about Mark Wahlberg’s career. I realize the world has other, far more important things on its mind - as do I - but I need to get something off my chest. Photo: Vulture and Courtesy of the Studios Mark Wahlberg (clockwise from top left) as a cop in The Departed, a former cop in Spenser Confidential, an existentially conflicted firefighter in I Heart Huckabees, and a porn star in Boogie Nights.
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