Tom Hardy is among the best and most unique actors of his era. As a younger man, he presented as a pretty boy. Seriously, there are publicity shots of the youthful Hardy where you’d think he was in a boy band. Over time, those good looks morphed into something more weighty and dangerous. Sure, Hardy was (and is) a devastatingly handsome man, but let’s just say he had to grow into the manly part, and when he did, it stuck. I recently spoke to a couple of behind-the-scenes staff on The Bikeriders and they both had a similar reaction when they learned of Hardy’s casting: Tom Hardy as a motorcycle guy? Of course.
What’s been most fascinating to me over Hardy’s career is his willingness to take risks (there’s a whole subsection of film fandom dedicated to his use of different accents), not only with his performances, but with the films he appears in. Few mix it up quite like Hardy. Better still, few mix it up as well.
Hardy turned 47 this week. He’s no longer the new guy or the next best thing, he’s a peer among peers. As such, here is my admittedly biased (hey, the only list that really matters is your own) list of Tom Hardy’s best seven films (thus far):
7b. Bronson (2008): Have you ever watched a film that you admired completely, were at times in awe of its commitment, but never wanted to see again? Well, for me, that’s Tom Hardy’s Bronson. And yet, it has to be included because Bronson (a film about a nutty-as-hell prisoner who goes by the name of Charles Bronson), despite Hardy’s unflinching performance and Nicholas Winding Refn’s punishing direction, is the film that made people in the industry see Hardy’s potential and insane willingness to become his role. While all of this is true, I don’t think I could ever sit through it again.
7. Dunkirk (2017): What is it with Director Christopher Nolan continually covering up Hardy’s face? (See The Dark Knight Rises for another example). Whatever the case, Nolan gave Hardy a near dialogue-free and mostly obscured role as a heroic British pilot at the rescue of Dunkirk. For most of the film, all we can see are Hardy’s eyes (the oxygen-giving facemask covers that handsome mug), and it’s amazing how it’s more than enough. Even the dialogue does have, is almost entirely practical. We know nothing of this man’s past being a fighter pilot, and yet, when his plane lands on the beach, out of fuel, and likely to be captured, we feel him in every important way when he sets his plane alight and awaits German capture. In fulfilling every part of his duty, Hardy’s pilot is the quiet heart of the film.
6. The Revenant (2015): A polarizing film for many, The Revenant pits a partially scalped, grungy-bearded trapper (Hardy) against another trapper (Leonardo DiCaprio) with an adopted Native American son. It’s hard to imagine Hardy looking worse on film than he does here, but he sure as hell looks authentic. While the film won three Oscars (for DiCaprio’s lead performance, Alejandro Iñárritu’s direction, and for cinematography), there was a lot of backlash. Some made fun of DiCaprio’s character surviving a bear mauling, others hated Iñárritu’s use of natural light, and a sizable number of critics found the film to be a self-indulgent bore, few held any animus towards Hardy’s fierce, roiling performance, which resulted in his only Oscar nomination to date in supporting). For a film that isn’t exactly a laugh riot, when DiCaprio hatchets off a couple of Hardy’s digits during their climactic mano-a-mano, Hardy’s response had me in hysterics. “God damn it,” he says as if he spilled coffee on his shirt. Maybe you had to be there, but the dead-pan delivery of Hardy left me in stitches.
5. Legend (2015): Playing the twin roles of brothers Reggie and Ronny Kray (two of the most infamous gangsters in the history of the UK), many expected Hardy’s dual performance to earn him Oscar buzz. Unfortunately, for reasons that still escape me, Legend received only middling reviews despite Hardy’s remarkable work as the twins who controlled much of the British underground during the 1960s. While the two brothers may have been identical in appearance, Hardy is so good at showcasing the nuances of each brother that you always know who’s who before a word is even said. The Krays were incredibly brutal (Reggie was a former boxer, and Ronny was a paranoid schizophrenic). They clashed often, but their sheer relentlessness and easy willingness to resort to violence made them terrors for almost the entire decade. Hardy embodies their disparate personas with ease. It’s one of the best performances that anyone has hardly seen.
4. Locke (2013): Written and directed by Stephen Knight, the entirety of Locke showcases only one character on screen, Tom Hardy as the title character. He’s a man racing through the night juggling three miserable situations: the woman he got pregnant with, the wife who is unaware, and his company that demands he gets back to his worksite. While we hear voices through his blue tooth in his car, there is only Hardy to lay your eyes on. For nearly 90 riveting minutes, that is all you need. Locke is no saint, and he knows it. He played around and got more than caught. He’s also putting his job at risk to make it to the hospital to be there when his out-of-wedlock child is born. Watching Hardy navigate each conversation while attempting to maintain control over himself and those coming through the phone is like watching a prima ballerina dance as fast as she can. She can hold up for a time, but reality can only be held at bay for so long. The conceit of the film is so simple, but the delivery is anything but. You can thank Hardy for that.
3. Warrior (2011): I am on record as a full-fledged hater of MMA. At some point in nearly every match, the bout ends up with two guys hugging up against a fence (not that there’s anything wrong with that), but Jesus, as a combat sport, I find it boring as hell. So why did I go to a theater to see it? Because Tom Hardy was on the poster, I knew there was no way this was going to be a movie about two guys hugging against a fence (again, not that there’s…). And man, was I ever right. Two brothers (played by Hardy and Joel Edgerton) enter a winner-take- all MMA tournament for very different reasons. Hardy’s is mysterious, but Edgerton’s is more obvious: he’s a high school science teacher upside down on his mortgage, and despite being a mediocre former MMA pro, thinks the potential beatings are worth the risk. That’s a relatively simple synopsys, but when you layer in Hardy’s guilt from soldiering in the Middle East, Edgerton’s character revealing that the financial system is rigged against the decent, and then the story of two brothers and their father (a grand Nick Nolte–who scored a well-deserved Oscar nomination) and the broken home the two boys came from and the old man still lives in, well, you have one hell of a movie.
2. Mad Max Fury Road (2015): There may be no loonier action move this century than George Miller’s Mad Max reboot Fury Road. The funny thing is, the movie mostly asks Hardy (as the new Max) to be a presence as opposed to driving the story. That honor goes to Charlize Theron as Furiosa, the one-armed warrior of the wasteland. As the story goes, Hardy and Theron did not get along at all on set. Theron is pathologically incapable of being late, and Hardy is a slow walk to the shoot. Perhaps the two didn’t connect off-screen, but they sure made wild, beautiful scenery on it. George Miller has absolutely one of the weirdest resumes of any director. Who makes five Mad Max movies, a sequel about a talking pig, two animated films about happy-footed penguins, and a film about Idris Elba playing a genie from a bottle across from Tilda Swinton? Sadly, after the disappointing box office returns of the Mad Max prequel Furiosa (starring Anya Taylor Joy), it seems unlikely we will ever see Hardy back in that black Dodge charger making the most of a run-down world by finding the best of what’s still around. Oh, I almost forgot. Hardy wears a mask in this film too. Yes, it’s getting weird.
1. The Drop: Here’s where sentiment kicks in. It’s not that The Drop isn’t a great modern noir (it most certainly is), it’s about the fact that at its core, the film is about a boy and his dog. A dog that Hardy’s seemingly mild-mannered bartender Bob Saginowski discovers in the waste bin of a woman who he does not know (a wonderful Noomi Rapace). Bob knows nothing of Dogs, but Nadia (Rapace) worked for a time at an animal rescue. She explains that the pit bull puppy needs a home, and all but forces Bob into taking the dog in against his better judgment. Let’s just say I’m a sucker for this sort of thing. The rest of the film involves Chechen gangsters who own Marv’s (James Gandolfini, in his final performance) bar and use it to launder money. Another subplot emerges when an unstable man (a brilliantly erratic Matthias Schoenarts) from Nadia’s past becomes involved in a plot with Marv to make a heist on the biggest money-laundering night of the year–the Super Bowl. In the early part of the film, we underestimate Bob. As Hardy says at the beginning of the film, “Me? I just tend the bar…and wait.” There are hints along the way that Bob is not as simple or as safe as we think, but those clues are doled out in perfectly piece-meal fashion. But then an act of violence occurs, and Bob’s explanation for his actions, however brutal, makes a lot of sense to those of us who’ve ever loved a dog. “Nobody ever sees you coming, do they, Bob?” John Ortiz’s intrepid detective whispers to Bob. No. They don’t. Especially if they come between this boy and his dog.
Postscript:
Early on in his pre-Bronson career, Hardy made positive impressions in Guy Ritchie’s RockNRolla, Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antionette, and Daniel Craig’s coming-out party Layer Cake. He also had significant supporting parts in Chris Nolan’s Inception, and Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. All those parts were a little small to make the cut, but they hinted at what was to come. Hardy (masked again by Nolan) was a towering presence as Bane in The Dark Knight Rises. There’s a part of me that wanted to place Venom: Let There Be Carnage in the seventh slot. I don’t see the Venom movies as comic-book films, but rather as a pair of very strange romantic comedies between a man and the alien life force that inhabits him. The first Venom was fine, but Let There Be Carnage was a full-on hoot. Most recently, Hardy was excellent as an in-over-his-head leader of a motorcycle gang in The Bikeriders. Jeff Nichols’ film about the beer-swizzling, chain-smoking, leather-jacketed chopper horsemen is excellent and so is Hardy in it. But I already cheated with a 7b.7c seemed like a bridge too far.
Bonus Postscript: Lawless was 75% there for me. As a person born in Kentucky, and from a family of moonshine runners, a film directed by John Hillcoat (The Proposition), and starring two of my absolute favorite actors (Hardy and Jessica Chastain), should have rolled cleanly into the pocket for me. But way, and I do mean WAY, too much time was taken up by the then on the rise Shia LaBoef’s character. I’ve seen LaBoef be good in multiple films, so I’m not attacking a guy who’s become an easy target, it’s just that the storyline wasn’t necessary at all. The adults (Hardy and Chastain) should have been more than enough to build a movie around.
