By: Elaine Wang
Due to his impressive filmography, charming good looks, and hilarious comedy, Brad Pitt is considered across the country as one of the most recognized actors of the 21st century.
In the new action-comedy Bullet Train, Pitt stars as a former professional assassin codenamed “Ladybug”, who resumes work after therapy to become a calmer person. He does this all while fighting assassins on a high-speed Japanese train and attempting to steal a briefcase full of cash. In one scene, after a violent encounter, Ladybug states, “Let this be [a] lesson in the toxicity of anger.” However, “Bullet Train doesn’t hit the Pitt sweet spot”, BBC Culture states, with the movie becoming flat and boring at times.
“[Pitt’s] true strength is more complicated than holding up masks of comedy or tragedy, though. Pitt’s best performances are… drama infused with dry humour,” BBC Culture reporter Caryn James stated.
Pitt’s acting career started in 1991 when he acted as the “hunky boy toy” in Thelma and Louise. A year later, he reappeared in A River Runs Through It. Other movies he starred in include Inglorious Basterds (2009), Once Upon a Time in… Hollywood (2019), the film that earned him his Oscar, Killing Them Softly (2012), Bennett Miller’s Moneyball (2011), 12 Monkeys (1995), and Fight Club (1999). His turning point appeared in his 2009 film, when his sardonic smirk first appeared, and after that he carried it into other films.
In the past decade Pitt has surprised viewers even more by starring in consecutive wartime movies. David Ayers’ Fury (2014) is a WWII action film, featuring Pitt as a character nicknamed “Wardaddy”. In Robert Zemeckis’ Allied (2016), a WWII romance film, Pitt’s character is a Canadian spy partnered with Marion Cotillard. War Machine (2017), in which Pitt acted as an arrogant US military commander in Afghanistan, is an “ambitious failure”, Caryn James wrote.
“Brad Pitt has built a body of work that most actors only dream of. With performances that range over multiple genres and three decades, and a savvy public relations strategy, his is a model of how to manage a movie-star career… …Pitt’s droll sense of his image and career shows us how to be a movie star – not an Instagram celebrity or an influencer, but an enduring, old-fashioned movie star – one for the 21st Century,” Caryn James wrote.
In GQ magazine’s August issue, Pitt talked about being sober and quitting smoking. But what caused fans to go wild were the photos taken of him, because they “defy conventional leading-man glamour. In one he is wan, eyes rimmed with liner, lying in a watery bed of flowers like a dead Ophelia. In another, his eyes are adorned with rays of metallic silver makeup,” BBC Culture states.
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