Apple Defends Brendan Fraser’s Over-the-Top ‘Killers’ Performance
The studio showed some subtle support for the actor.
Nina Westervelt/Variety via Getty
Apple Original Films is apparently feeling a wee bit defensive about the criticism of Brendan Fraser’s over-the-top performance in Killers of the Flower Moon.
This week the studio tweeted a passage from the book upon which the movie is based with dialogue from attorney W.S. Hamilton, the character the Oscar winner plays.
“Note the exclamation point,” Apple tweeted, apparently defending Fraser’s unsubtle performance.
The reaction comes amid a divisive response from movie-goers and critics to Fraser’s portrayal of the attorney. Daily Beast contributor Joe Hoeffner described it like this:
[Fraser] spends his seven minutes of screentime chewing the scenery like Prince Albert tobacco. He speaks in a tar-thick Southern accent that by turns recalls Foghorn Leghorn, Benoit Blanc, and that Tumblr post about an antebellum lawyer trying to score acid at Coachella. He makes a habit of suddenly shouting; those with echolalia may find themselves imitating the way he bellows out the words “dumb boy!” like a pissed-off water buffalo. Even when he isn’t talking, he draws focus: His creased mouth and bulging cheeks suggest a man who accidentally swallowed a frog and is trying to play it cool.
Fraser did have his fans, though, with some arguing that if director Martin Scorsese wanted a more nuanced performance, he could easily have reined in Fraser. Even Hoeffner said he couldn’t really be mad about the hammy turn.
“It’s fun to watch a great actor go for broke, and it’s even more fun if it doesn’t really work,” he wrote.
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