It’s too bad that I can’t put Altered Carbon or House of Card on here since they’re TV shows and not movies, but Joel Kinnaman has proven that he’s great on TV as well as in movies. He does come off as a little stiff at times and maybe a little too gruff now and again but he is able to loosen up and get into his roles a little more than some people give him credit for. It’d be great to see him in more comic book movies since he does have the profile and the ability to fill out a role that can allow him to take the lead or at the very least be a dutiful and obedient soldier. He’s typically the kind of guy one would look at and think that he’s going to be the guy that will make it out when everyone around him is either giving their life to make sure such a thing happens, or are just dying sine they’re not classically good-looking and might need to die for one reason or another.
Here are five of his best movies.
5. Edge of Winter
David Ehrlich of IndieWire is right when he states that Joel is good enough to make this character work, but the movie kind of forgets that little tidbit and seems to lose track of what to do with him. Elliott wants to spend time with his sons but for one reason or another he’s just not a stable character and seems to go back and forth between wanting to be a good father and going stark raving mad since eventually his temper and his madness collide and make this movie a life or death situation that leaves a person confused as to which way to turn when thinking about who they should feel sorry for. Maybe that was the goal.
4. RoboCop
Yes, I KNOW, this is an odd choice to make since the critics lambasted it and even the fans kind of snubbed it in a big way. But it was an attempt at bringing back a favorite character and all in all the effects weren’t all that bad when you consider that the original RoboCop used a lot of stop motion and the effects back in the day weren’t nearly as great. The fact that it was attempted seems audacious at best, but there are still a few people out there that would at least attempt to understand the reasoning behind this one. After all, he didn’t really have much more left of him than the other guy, and his death scene made a lot more sense.
3. Run All Night
Redemption is a great plot device since it implies that no matter how bad things can get at one point or another, there’s always some small hope that they might get better in the future. Jimmy is an angry and miserable drunk that’s spent a lifetime killing, and his son Mike wants nothing to do with him. But when Jimmy kills the son of an old associate to save his son and expose a crime that took place he eventually earns his son’s respect again, though it comes too late since as one might have guessed Jimmy dies by the end and has in some way gained his absolution at a heavy price.
2. The Informer
See what I told you? This guy is the great kind of character that’s used as a soldier, usually a specialist of some type, and his characters have this uncanny knack of being controlled by people that will gladly toss them away if it ever proves to be convenient. Think of it though, a person does some of the dirtiest work for an employer that can be handled only to receive the reward of being taken out when it’s convenient to the handler. That almost sounds like it would be something that a writer would lay down as part of a script with a lot of serious undertones linking it to real life.
1. Suicide Squad
It’s great that Flag is this top-level soldier and leader, but in a movie like this he’s kind of a tagalong since the metahumans and average but insanely skilled humans that he’s going along with are the type that could take him apart if it came to a one on one bout. Think about it, just about any of them could taken him, aside from perhaps Slipknot or Captain Boomerang, and somehow he’s supposed to be in charge. If not for the explosives planted in their heads, or necks, it’s likely that he would have been left in a pool of blood near the beginning of the movie, but then it might have been a little more entertaining, and we can’t have that.
He’s a good actor, but he needs to stretch out a bit.
Follow Us
