Like most years, Best Actor is a pretty done deal. They like to give the award to someone who either was never really supposed to be nominated for an award (Jamies Foxx made the transition from Booty Call to Ray pretty seamlessly), or who have been long overdue (how else do you explain Al ‘hoo-ah’ Pacino’s win for Scent of a Woman?). This year, it’s an odd amalgamation of both, being that this year’s front-runner has been in obscurity for a while, but also was never really supposed to win.
Best Actor
The Sure Thing:
Mickey Rourke (The Wrestler)
Take whatever money you have left in this economy , and bet it on Rourke. Your money is safe, I assure you. Not only is he pretty good (actually, he’s really good), but he’s far better than the movie itself (which helps people a lot), and the resurrection of his character mirrors that of Rourke himself, which is the sort of thing that the academy just loves.
Which only leaves us with four other slots.
Frank Langella (Frost/Nixon)
Brad Pitt (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button)
Dev Patel (Slumdog Millionaire)
Sean Penn (Milk)
If the fluctuating critical tide tells us anything, it’s that Slumdog is going to be nominated in more categories than we thought it was going to be a month ago, and this will probably be one of them. Penn is playing a historical figure, and Pitt is latched on to the biggest, most expensive prestige picture of the season (plus, he’s significantly better than he was in any other lead performance of his this decade). Langella is pretty good (if not great, his Nixon does not bear favorable comparison to Anthony Hopkins’s).
So, all things told, this sounds like a reasonable final five.
In case of upset:
Leonardo DiCaprio (Revolutionary Road)
Clint Eastwood (Gran Turino)
Dustin Hoffman (Last Chance Harvey)
Richard Jenkins (The Visitor)
I kind of doubt any of those, but their respective studios are pushing for them, so it’s possible.
On a personal note, I think it’s a shame that Josh Brolin’s turn in W is nowhere to be seen here. In terms of an actor carrying a movie, can you think of five better examples this year? I can’t.
