Tim Robbins did 2 extraordinary films that made me an instant fan of his work. The Player was a sharp movie that looked at the inside of the Hollywood circle within the context of a quasi murder mystery. The other is one of my top 5 films of all time… The Shawshank Redemption. I still believe it was a shame that Forest Gump won best picture over Shawshank and that Tom Hanks won best actor over Robbins (no disrespect intended to either Forest Gump or Tom Hanks).
Unfortunately over the last couple of years Robbins has disappeared into relative obscurity (not counting his political exploits). He appeared in films like Nothing to Lose, Arlington Road, Mission to Mars, the horrible AntiTrust… and in all of them he gave respectable performances, but nothing that measured up to the 2 films mentioned in my first paragraph.
Then along comes Mystic River, followed by a Golden Globe win and suddenly Tim is back. Despite the Golden Globe I think both Alec Baldwin (The Cooler) and Ken Watanabe (The Last Samurai) are in line in front of Robbins for the supporting actor Oscar next month, but even so Robbins has reminded us that he is a top notch actor with a lot of good performances left in him. Personally I’m glad to see it, he’s been overlooked for far too long.
