JA from MNPP here, wishing the actor Jeremy Renner a wonderful 39th birthday. May this year be the best, most Oscar-nominated one yet!I don't pay as much attention to the Oscars beforehand as Nat and y'all do but I am aware of the buzz that's long been around Renner's Hurt Locker performance this year (as well as the film as a whole) of course, and frankly I see it as a long, long time coming. I've been championing this chap for years! And here's a couple of the reasons why.
I think a lot of people dismissed Dahmer as one off the many redundant serial-killer exploitation flicks of the decade - post-Seven cinema's been littered with 'em after all. One of the Aughts' many somewhat questionable exploits - become a serial killer, get your own semi-sympathetic movie! It certainly worked wonders for Charlize Theron's career (not to knock Monster - I am a big-time defender of that entire film and her performance therein). But Dahmer came and went in 2002 with hardly a mention - it actually wasn't even until a couple of years later that I saw the film. But when I did, wham - Renner's take on Jeffrey Dahmer is no bull about it one of the the decade's finest performances, period. He not only makes you understand the hole at the center of Dahmer that led to such horrors, but he nails the disturbingly over-charged sexual angle as well. It's a disturbing film for a lot of reasons, but not because anyone ever lets Dahmer off the hook for the things he did - no, it's that Renner's performance is just so captivating that he burrows his way right into you from the screen. A star-making role that took seven or so years to take, I guess.
And then in 2007 he starred in another under-appreciated film, 28 Weeks Later, Juan Carlos Fresnadillo's sequel to Danny Boyle's smash zombie flick. I actually prefer the sequel to the original, for a lot of reasons, but I stand somewhat lonely on that front I do realize. I think most people took the film from too face-on a point-of-view, when it begged to be viewed from the side, as a sort of metaphorical fairy-tale - Poppa Bear's turned into the Big Bad Wolf and he's gonna gobble those kids right up. But aside from the film itself's worth, once again Renner popped off the screen to me as sort of the - if we're gonna continue looking at the film as a fairy-tale for the moment - Hunter figure that comes between Little Red Riding Hood(s) and the big mean wolf monster. It also serves as sort of a precursor to his role in The Hurt Locker in at least an exterior fashion, since he's a big serious soldier-man here too.But all that's beside the point really, since once again, although here with a much smaller canvas to play on than in Dahmer, he's instilling his character with so much, well, character, that he just sorta reaches off the screen and smacks ya across the cheek in a playful and loving manner. He can so easily project this easy-going camaraderie to the audience, this feeling that the two of you have a secret and are in this together. Whether, as in Dahmer the secret is the monstrous sort that you'd rather not be a part of, or in 28 Weeks Later and The Hurt Locker, it's more of a fraternal bond, a you-and-me-against-the-world sens of intimacy, is up to the film surrounding him. But Jeremy Renner takes you where he's going every single second the camera's pointed at his face. He takes them, and us, apart, only to piece us together again in some new fashion afterward. Never to be the same again.
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