De Near-o
Samir Mehta | March 24, 2025
[hidden by request]
Steve West | March 25, 2025
Irishman certainly. I really like it when he's subdued and not the toughest guy in the room. But Casino shows what he can do as the toughest guy. I admire how he menaces with implied violence and becomes violent when necessary as in The Godfather Part II. He's even great when meek as in Mad Dog and Glory.
Scott Hardie | March 25, 2025
Samir, my take is similar to yours. I haven't seen Joker or The Irishman or Killers of the Flower Moon, so I can't vouch for those specifically, but I know that they were widely lauded, and they certainly come to mind quickly. I saw and really liked Silver Linings Playbook, and I thought De Niro was impressive in it.
I asked because a conservative acquaintance on social media remarked about not enjoying the new Zero Hour, which opened a floodgate of complaining about De Niro from her friends. Some were calling him a garbage human being because of his liberal opinions and saying that they refused to watch any of his work, which, fine. But there were others who tried to argue that his work was really good up until the early-nineties period roughly comprising GoodFellas to Heat, and that he hasn't made anything good or given a good performance since then -- which strikes me as possibly subconsciously influenced by politics (since that's also the time when De Niro started to criticize Republican politicians) but also just plain ignorant of his career resurgence. Sure, he had quite a rough patch where he self-parodized himself into irrelevance with dreck like Meet the Fockers and Showtime and Shark Tale and The Adventures of Rocky & Bullwinkle, but he's been on a tear for the last decade at least. I just wondered if this opinion was widespread (not that TC offers a large sample size) and if liberals shared it (certainly we lean left as a group here), so thanks for providing me with a bit of data.
Steve, I share your opinion too. When I look back over the arc of De Niro's career, I see an actor who had early success playing criminals, cops, and other men of violence, and got pigeonholed way too often into those parts as a result. He can be great even when menace has nothing to do with his character, as in, well, Silver Linings Playbook for example. Actors typically dislike being pigeonholed because it limits their artistic range and prevents them from being taken seriously as artists, so the fact that De Niro is widely considered one of the greatest actors of his generation (except by my conservative acquaintance's friends apparently), despite spending his entire career being typecast, is amusing to me.
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Scott Hardie | March 23, 2025
What was Robert De Niro's last great performance?
What was Robert De Niro's last great film (whether he was good in it or not)?
After I get some responses, I'll share why I'm curious about this.