No I don’t mean your average poor peformance or good performance. In the Iron Lady, Streep puts out an Oscar winning performance, which the rest of the Cast (with the possible exception of Jim Broadbent) seemed like they were phoning it in. Any other examples?
Franke Potente in The Bourne Identity. Eveybody else was doing their damndest to just be characters in a spy/violence movie, whereas she was acting & reacting as an actual character to the things that were going on around her.
The obvious answer is Ewan McGregor in Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith as Obi-Wan Kenobi. He has Alec Guinness dead to rights; he absolutely nails both what Alec Guinness did with the character originally and what Obi-Wan would have been like as a younger man. Even Natalie Portman is pretty bad in the film. and no one else is very good either.
My vote would be Ewan McGregor, but not in Ep.3 (where he’s “not bad” among a bunch of “much worse”), but Moulin Rouge!, where he is genuinely exceptional amongst some of the most painful performances ever put on film (with Jim Broadbent being, again, a modest exception)
Alan Rickman as the Sheriff in Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves. He deliberately went hwayyyy over the top. Great performance.
Check out James Dean in “Rebel Without a Cause”. It was like the difference between AM Radio and Color TV.
I thought the actor who played Palpatine was quite good in that movie.
For the OP, I thought Gary Oldman was the best thing in The Professional, acting circles around everyone else. Of course, he also did this in True Romance, but that had the incredible scene between Dennis Hopper and Christopher Walken, and Brad Pitt’s stoner was pretty good too, so I can’t say Oldman was the only good thing in it.
Speaking of Brad Pitt, he’s run away with a couple of movies. Kalifornia and 12 Monkeys come to mind.
I vote for Primal Fear. I’ve never been much of a fan of Gere’s acting, personally. But it had a lot of good actors in it, Laura Linney, Afre Woodard, John Mahoney, Andre Braugher and MOST OF ALL, Ed Norton.
He was worthy of a much better film around him, b/c he just blew my mind.
Christoph Waltz in Inglourious Basterds.
Respectively disagree, I normally like Oldman, but I thought he was unbelievably hammy in this movie, surrounded by better understated performances. His performance was certainly amazingly well done, but misplaced with the tone and feel of the rest of the movie and cast. His every appearance was like Python’s Spanish Inquisition bursting in.
I also thought that Russel Crow in Gladiator fit the OP.
Good call.
I would suggest that Robin Hood PoT is the inverse of the OP: pretty much everyone - even the comic relief characters - gave stand-out performances apart from Costner and Mastrantonio. Of course, the film works so much better because Costner is so overshadowed.
I’m inclined to hate Inglourious Basterds not because it’s a terrible film (I’ve not seen it) but because when it came out and there were ads on TV for it all the time, they managed to teach my kiddo a word I didn’t want him to learn.
S: Mom…what’s a…basterd?
Me: Uh…go ask your father!