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MASON VERGER (Hannibal)

It’s tough being a supporting character in a Hannibal Lecter film. They give him most of the good lines, he’s featured more prominently in the advertising, and reviewers trip over each other coming up with awful puns to describe Anthony Hopkins’s latest goofy-line-filled performance (how many times did you hear that one of these films was ‘to die for?’). Let’s face it: it’s a thankless job, and a lot of good work has gone unfairly overlooked because of it. Ted Levine as Jamie Gumb (‘Buffalo Bill’) and Ralph Fiennes as Francis Dolarhyde (‘the Tooth Fairy’) both had some fantastically creepy moments, but the tip of the hat really needs to go to Gary Oldman here, as former Lecter patient Mason Verger. Granted, he’s a lot creepier in the book (but what wasn’t?), but Oldman makes the role his own.

Why does he belong here? It takes some doing to make someone that victimized that truly unlikeable, but Verger makes it happen. He demeans his subordinates, he has a pet eel, and his entire scheme revolves around feeding Hannibal Lecter to giant pigs. In and of itself, that doesn’t make him even on the same plain of evil as Lecter, but his character is allowed to relish his campiness in a way that Lecter unfortunately isn’t. When Oldman, in his raspily deformed southern twang, tells Agent Starling that ‘nobody beats the riz(in reference to risen christ)’ just see if you don’t find yourself thinking that he's having the kind of fun Lecter used to have, in those days before Hopkins was on every producer in Hollywood’s speed dial under ‘Wise Father Figure.’

Why doesn’t he get more recognition? In addition to Hannibal Lecter syndrome, Oldman suffered from indistinguishable syndrome. Based on makeup alone, that could be Meg Ryan under there for all that we can tell, and actors rarely get much praise for roles where you don’t get to see their faces (there has yet to be an Academy Award nomination for such a role, in spite of heavy campaigns on behalf of Charles Fleischer for Who Framed Roger Rabbit and Andy Serkis for Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers).

Plus, just about everything else in Hannibal sucked big time. It's hard a single out one thing as good where everything else is bad and maintain critical respectability.

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