4. “Se7en” (1995)
Perhaps the most profound decision made on “Se7en” was keeping Spacey’s name off the casting roster and all promotional materials for the film. As John Doe, the perpetrator and mastermind whose exploits have been the bane of Detectives Mills (Brad Pitt) and Somerset (Morgan Freeman). Andrew Kevin Walker’s script brilliantly outsizes Spacey’s villainy by showing us the sheer dedication Doe has sunk into his pet project. When he finally makes an appearance, he does so in a genuinely jaw dropping scene – walking into the police station with blood all over his starched white dress shirt, hollering “DETECTIVE! You’re looking for me.” The third act of “Se7en” belongs to Spacey and he runs with it, severely downplaying the more maniacal elements that a lesser actor might have seized onto. Doe acknowledges his violence as an afterthought, the direct logical outcome of a world gone to shit. His final stroke of horrific genius is unforgettable and Spacey’s fevered pleadings for Pitt to “become vengeance” are timelessly chilling. Effectively a supporting role that grows to dominate and loom over the film, it’s a compliment to Kevin Spacey that John Doe stands out as so much more than a crazed baddie, but a misanthropic puppet-master whose plan is impenetrable and unstoppable.
5. “L.A. Confidential” (1997)
Adapting the dense, dark crime novel by James Ellroy should never have worked. The book is close to unfilmable (look at De Palma’s atrocious “The Black Dahlia” for a hint of how it could have turned out), the cast were near-unknowns — a faded Kim Basinger and Danny De Vito being the biggest names involved — and the behind-the-scenes talent didn’t suggest it would be worth a damn, being Brian Helgeland, writer of “Nightmare On Elm Street 4: The Dream Master” and Curtis Hanson, director of “The River Wild.” But sometimes, a special alchemy occurs, and “L.A. Confidential” turned out, against all expectations, to be one of the very best films of the nineties, as good a Hollywood crime picture of its type as any since “Chinatown.” And at its rotten center; Kevin Spacey, giving one of his very best performances. He’s at his most movie-star like (Hanson told him to channel Dean Martin) as Jack Vincennes, the detective more interested in courting stardom and feathering his nest than catching criminals. He starts the movie as all surface, a man with a hollow where his heart should be, but even Vincennes becomes aware of the corruption all around him, and his conscience is finally pricked when a young actor (played by “The Mentalist”) ends up dead. Spacey plays the growing uneasiness beautifully, topped off by his final, shocking scene; coming to his superior, Captain Dudley Smith (James Cromwell) with his suspicions, he gets a bullet in the heart for his troubles. Even for a man who was pivotal to most of the gut-wrenching twists of the mid 1990s, the actor’s look of shock, and relief, as the pieces come together as his life slips away (even as he sets a trap for Smith with two words — “Rollo Tomassi”), is one of the finest single moments of Spacey’s career.