Michael Sheen totally walks away with Tron: Legacy. Sure, I like Jeff Bridges as well as the next guy, and I definitely want to see Bruce Boxleitner’s plastic surgeon in fifteen years, but Sheen’s the thing I’ll recall when (if) I think back on this film.
It’s a simple setup: the hero needs to get from A to B to C. B is a bar in the computer world of Tron, and here’s what you need to remember about the computer world of Tron: the hero’s father designed it in the ‘80s. That means the bar is totally new wave, if new wave had continued to evolve in the technological, synthesized, Daft Punk way it appeared to be going. And who would run such a place, the hippiest, waviest, grooviest place on the grid? Why, David Bowie, of course! But maybe Disney wouldn’t pay Bowie’s quote, or perhaps the Thin White Duke had other commitments, or, well, who knows. The fact is that instead of David Bowie, Tron: Legacy gives us Michael Sheen (Timeline, Underworld, The Queen, Frost/Nixon, Kingdom of Heaven, New Moon – the man’s clearly a member of Michael Caine’s “if the check shows up, so will I” school of career management) as David Bowie in all his coked-up glory!
By the looks of it, Sheen’s stage direction boiled down to, “Every character the audience has met so far is boring as hell. Be a sport and punch things up, will you?” The man comes through. He’s so manic, so goofy, so zonked out of his skull on whatever passes for high-octane narcotics in Tron’s world that he becomes a one-man jolt of energy and spontaneity in an otherwise depressingly relentless juvenile actioner.
It’s always a pleasure to see an actor prove that there are no small roles. Way to go, Michael Sheen! I look forward to seeing what you pop up in next!
1 comment:
Considering all that you "could" have talked about when looking at "Tron: Legacy" - I'm jazzed that you chose to dissect this character! I would never have known!
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