"I am not kind, I'm vicious. It is part of my charm." -- Clifton Webb
Forest Whitaker oozes with a glutton's agitation. In a world where whites like the hard menace of Shaft, Whitaker is Fat Albert, edgy and twisted with angst by turns, this asserted with only passing familiarity with his recur on The Shield (a series worthwhile here for its stark honesty; I know, I know, I may never get to it, and only know as much as I do about it because Fox ran it after midnight for a stint and I regret not taking more care--another day). But I do not mesh with viewing Chiklis for much the same reason.
Hypermania is difficult to perform without annoying your audience. Chiklis has it, James Woods finesses it. Whitaker wobbles attitudinally, which is why he fails as a lead. Playing off Foster in Panic Room just works. Prat boy with conscience picks a side, securing his sentence in the process, but Diary of A Hitman doesn't, because it's a slobber, much as of course casting him as the colorful African tyrant.
Big daddy is a fading species. Idi. Papa Doc. Baby Doc. They peopled our latter day socialist stagnation, which is now going to send our republic into convulsions. I am drawing closer to George Will's colorful umbrage, and think the president should resign, but then again, the 43rd president is a war criminal. The 44th dulls Harvard's preeminence considerably. I no longer believe in the American two party system. I do believe Whitaker has an authentic touchstone in The Crying Game. Fat boy out of his depth, playing the hand he had, with bleary gaze, just enough blubber to evince inner city terrain and poor nutrition. This leads to brain plaques, the aggression of dementia. His portraitures may be adept, but not memorial in any conflated measure of acclaim.
Perhaps intense malevolence does have a ripple herd like effect, given the extraordinary cluster of spree killing episodes we have to field. Perhaps the Coke a Cola security footage commercial has a point.
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