“True Romance ” (1993)
Tony Scott’s collaboration with Quentin Tarantino is an odyssey of off-the-wall supporting characters. It’s not enough that you’d spend time with star-crossed lovers Clarence and Alabama. You’ve also got to wade through the funhouse of faces played by Dennis Hopper, Christopher Walken, James Gandolfini, Brad Pitt, and a possibly imaginary Elvis played by Val Kilmer. But few faces stand out quite like Drexl Spivey. Even in his brief screen-time, Oldman somehow manages to steal this entire movie not only from that murderer’s row of character actors, but also from the hyperkinetic Scott directing style, and Tarantino’s own goofball dialogue. Hip-hopping to the beat of his own drum, Oldman’s dreadlock-sporting drug dealer is like nothing else in his filmography. The unease in the air during his brief appearance is similar to the creepy standoff with Alfred Molina in “Boogie Nights,” but while he had fireworks, guns and drugs, Oldman intimidates purely by force of personality, his voice dropping to an octave we’re still surprised he has, utilizing a patois we’re not sure exists anywhere. In his single scene, Christian Slater’s Clarence confronts him, looking for a way to get Alabama free from her pimp, but at no point is it in question that Drexl is in control. Oldman’s lasting impression is both hysterical and intimidating, creating a villain who lingers long after his departure in the middle of one hyperactive movie.
“Leon: The Professional” (1994)
When Luc Besson’s acclaimed hitman actioner begins, we meet Jean Reno’s taciturn killer, a loner who quietly moves in and out of the shadows, getting his gruesome job done with maximum efficiency. It only makes sense that we would eventually meet the contrasting approach, and it comes courtesy of Oldman’s crooked cop Stansfield. A chainsmoker with a foul mouth, Stansfield doesn’t know when to quit, blaring orchestral music as he stages shootouts and makes threats in cheap suits. Oldman’s had a long career playing thankless villains, but he’s never been more outsized than he is in “Leon,” a bit moodier, a bit sexier, a bit less cerebral than the average Oldman baddie, pure id in a $35 haircut. Luc Besson seems to be working not from realism but from absurd, cartoonish archetypes, so when Stansfield realizes there is a problem, he doesn’t call for everyone as much as he summons, “EEEEEEVERRRRRRRYOOOOOOOOONE.” In one of the great action pictures of the early nineties, he’s iconic, mostly because, unlike other villains, Oldman gives Stansfield an irritated 9-to-5 attitude — yes, he’s taking illegal money, and yes, he’s ordering the murder of innocents, but everything is secondary to him actually doing his job, even if it’s just listless paperwork and dealing with superiors he openly demeans. Why walk the straight and narrow, Oldman seems to argue, when you can be bad and condescending?
Honorable Mentions: It’s tempting just to write “everything else” and be done with it, but that’s not quite fair, or indeed accurate, as anyone who’s seen “The Book of Eli” will attest to. But if ‘Tinker, Tailor’ and our feature put you in the mind for more Oldman, there’s plenty of good places to dig further. He’s superb in early screen role for Mike Leigh, as the benevolent skinhead Coxy alongside pal Tim Roth in “Meantime” — watching it, you sort of hope that Oldman and Leigh find their way back to each other at some stage. Also indelible is his trilogy of TV work with Alan Clarke in “Honest, Decent and True,” “The Firm” and “Heading Home.” Oldman and Roth also reteamed to terrific effect for Tom Stoppard‘s “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead,” the pair getting to show their easy chemistry and stage training in the writer’s classic deconstruction of “Hamlet.”
The first half of the 1990s saw performances at very different ends of the spectrum, including one of his very best as Lee Harvey Oswald in “JFK“; a nice turn in the underrated “Romeo Is Bleeding“; and operatic-sized, scenery chewing performances in “Bram Stoker’s Dracula” (particularly notable as the film is a mess, but Oldman’s the best thing in it by a country mile), “Immortal Beloved” and “The Fifth Element.” It’s a measure of his brilliance that the performances are all equally watchable, even if some of the latter category are worth watching only for him.
The late 1990s and early 2000s are thinner on the ground in terms of quality work, with his heavily made-up turn in “Hannibal” being perhaps the only performance really worth mentioning. But then came his blockbuster revival thanks to franchises helmed by Alfonso Cuaron and Christopher Nolan, and he’s winning in both. Oldman is tricksily ambivalent and lovingly paternal in the ‘Harry Potter‘ films, and noble and blue-collar in the “Batman” films. With both franchises wrapping up, or about to, we hope that there’ll be more to come along the lines of ‘Tinker Tailor,’ and we’re curious to see what he does in John Hillcoat‘s upcoming “The Wettest County.”
And we also hope that Oldman gets to step behind the camera again at some point, if his directorial debut “Nil By Mouth” was anything to go by — it’s arguably the best thing he’s ever been involved with, a brutal punch to the gut of an autobiography, with astonishing performances from Ray Winstone and Kathy Burke, in a film as humane as it is grim. If the rumors of Oldman planning to direct again are true, it can’t come soon enough.
— Oliver Lyttelton, Rodrigo Perez, Erik McLanahan and Gabe Toro.