Anyone who saw Brad Pitt’s first major screen role as the hitchhiker in Thelma
and Louise should have realized that here was a future star. The part was
small, but Pitt made it stand out with his natural screen charisma and peculiar
sense of humor. His detractors attribute his success to his “pretty boy” looks,
but this criticism is unfair and misguided. Real stardom comes from personality,
and Pitt displays one of the quirkiest and unique personas of any star, which
lends itself well to some of the oddball characters he has portrayed.
• Kalifornia (1993). Pitt is superb as a psychopathic killer in one of his earliest films. David Duchovny and Michelle Forbes portray a couple who decide to travel the backroads of America to visit the sites of serial killings to put together a book. They advertise for another couple to share expenses and what they get is Pitt, a nutball who has already committed murder, and Juliette Lewis as his trashy girlfriend. Pitt’s demented presence propels the story and keeps the intensity brewing until the weak climax that unfortunately succumbs to standard slasher conventions.
• Se7en (1995). Psycho and The Silence of the Lambs are the most lauded serial killer movies, but Se7en is the genre’s supreme achievement. Pitt stars as a young cop teamed with a seasoned veteran (Morgan Freeman) to track down a psychopath who kills based on the seven deadly sins. A dark, obsessive mood envelops the film, and the murders are quite grisly. Pitt and Freeman have a natural chemistry, and Gwyneth Paltrow is excellent as Pitt’s wife. The actor portraying the killer, known only as John Doe, gives a gem of a performance. A conversation between Pitt and the killer at the end is both hilarious and provocative, and it leads to a whopper of a conclusion. Screenwriter Andrew Kevin Walker deserves a special award for concocting such an ingenious ending. Director David Fincher has a knack for bizarre subjects, and Se7en is the first of his double whammy with Pitt.
• Twelve Monkeys (1995). Pitt took a supporting role as an inmate in a mental institution, and it resulted in his only Academy Award nomination to date. Bruce Willis stars as a visitor from the future who is looking to eradicate the source of a plague before it kills billions of people. Willis’ story is not believed, and he is committed to the asylum where he encounters Pitt. Pitt’s usual quirkiness soars to new heights creating a character who is a bundle of nervous ticks and misplaced energy. Director Terry Gilliam (Brazil, The Fisher King) is a master of bizarre science fiction and fantasy, and Twelve Monkeys ranks among his best work. Most people are probably not aware this is a remake of Chris Marker’s La Jetée (1962), an odd French New Wave short film that is told entirely in still photos.
• Fight Club (1999). Pitt and David Fincher teamed up again for this
outlandish social satire about a group of men who spend late night hours in
dingy bar basements beating each other up. The club grows out of a friendship
between a support group addict (Ed Norton) and a mysterious soap salesman named
Tyler Durden (Pitt), a character that has become legendary with film buffs.
The fight club is actually just another support group taken to extremes, and
Durden transforms the group into his own secret, private army to create mayhem
against society. Fight Club is a very twisted and polarizing film that
would seem more at home in the ’70s when studios had the nerve to flout authority,
and it may take years for it to achieve mainstream acceptance. Fight Club
contains one of those surprise twists that alters the entire film and its
meaning. Watch it a second time to catch all the clues sprinkled throughout.
This article appears in May 20-26, 2004.
