Top 3 Roles?
Memento
L.A. Confidential
The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert
Memento
Count of Monte Cristo
Ravenous
The Proposition
The Count of Monte Cristo
Momento
Ravenous
LA Confidential
There's many I haven't seen, though.
Memento
LA Confidential
The Proposition
Memento
The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert
The Proposition
Memento
Lawless
L.A. Confidential
Rover
Memento
LA Confidential
Someone gets it.
I was waiting for someone to mention Rover; that movie is a head trip. Not many actors could have done that role justice because it works on limited dialogue and a lot of unexplained expression. It's a movie that requires a lot of attention from the viewer and took a heck of a lot of commitment from Pearce to pull off properly.
He's also an absolute all-star in Memento, and once again that's a role not many actors could have pulled off as convincingly as he did.
I haven't seen Ravenous yet, and it's something I should get around to watching eventually, but I imagine it will be a tough third spot between that and L.A. Confidential.
I agree he’s fantastic in Rover but have you seen Lawless? It really shows his full range as an actor. Not only does he look terrifying but he plays the cold-blooded villain more convincingly than you would expect going on his previous roles.
Priscilla is worth a mention too, to be honest. His take on a drag queen is way OTT but you can’t fault his commitment to it in the way that he turns up the camp to 200% 😆
I've always avoided Priscilla, just wasn't really my kind of flick.
I did, however, see Lawless. I thought he was good in that, but... I'm torn....
The problem is that while I thought Tom Hardy gave an award-winning performance, I thought Shia Labeouf was affected in that film, and came across as too modern. Combine that with Jason Clarke's more subdued role as a tough but unreliable bruiser, and it made it kind of difficult get the full breadth of Pearce's character's villainy.
I guess that's not really Pearce's fault, though? But more-so the way the film was put together with rather disjointed characterizations that made it difficult to feel proper satisfaction with the turn of events involving said characters. It was a bit different from say, Road to Perdition, where the final showdown with Jude Law and Tom Hanks felt like a proper climax in the making, whereas Pearce's character -- while you really wanted to see him suffer -- had a bit of a contrived fate under less than satisfactory circumstances by characters who weren't fully developed. But then again, that's just my take on it, but I can certainly understand why Pearce's role in Lawless is memorable, because he really was a creepy villain in that.