Josh Brolin certainly has a particularly enigmatic Hollywood career. Since making his filmic debut at 17 in Richard Donner’s 1985 classic The Goonies, the actor took a 10-year hiatus from acting after his subsequent feature (1986’s Thrashin’) traumatised him with what in his own words was “horrendous” acting on his part. Since his return to the big screen however Brolin has worked almost exclusively with cinema’s most exciting auteurs. He played supporting roles in the sophomore features of David O. Russell and Guillermo del Toro, and has starred in the works of the Coen brothers, Gus van Sant, Oliver Stone, Paul Thomas Anderson, Spike Lee, Denis Villeneuve; the list goes on. With such an impressive résumé and an Academy Award nomination it’s surprising that up until now you’d be hard pressed to call the man a household name, for it has always been blockbusters that Brolin has struggled with the most.
Related: Sicario 2: Soldado review
A true auteur of an actor, Brolin takes full advantage of his extreme masculinity in almost every film he appears in. Whether it’s embodying the gruff John Wayne archetype (No Country for Old Men, Sicario, Only the Brave), examining the complexities of masculinity (Milk, Hail, Caesar!), or meshing his machismo with a sense of nigh-parodic surrealism (Inherent Vice), his manliness is his greatest weapon specifically because he doesn’t allow it to limit him. 2007 can be considered the year that Brolin’s streak of critical adoration began, but even after that the failures of his blockbuster ventures must have stung hard. 2010’s Jonah Hex, technically the actor’s first dive into the comic book superhero genre, was a colossal critical and commercial bomb. This year however there has hardly been a single month when Brolin wasn’t drowning in some major press tour. Between Avengers: Infinity War, Deadpool 2 and Sicario: Day of the Soldado, 2018 is the year of Brolin, and upon examining these three roles one can see startlingly strong similarities within them. Not only are all three films sequels, only the latter of which saw Brolin in the original, but all three also feature him as an anti-hero with depth and characterisation that Brolin brought through commitment alone.
Brolin in Avengers: Infinity War
It’s difficult to call Brolin’s legendary Thanos an anti-hero and not the genocidal incarnation of interplanetary evil, but it is my belief that the greatest villains are those who you can understand, and maybe even sympathise with, once you absolve yourself from emotion. Thanos may want to wipe out half of all life in the universe, but his Malthusian concerns for overpopulation and unsustainability are rooted in issues that are genuinely applicable to the world we live in today. Infinity War may be the 19th instalment in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and featured more characters than its 150-minute runtime could allow the proper attention for, but the reason it worked so well lies in the crucial decision to make Thanos its protagonist. When a particularly dedicated fan broke down the amount of screen time granted to each character in the film Thanos came out on top with 29 minutes, eclipsing the franchise’s star Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) by a full 11 minutes. As its downbeat ending supports, ‘Infinity War’ is Thanos’s movie, and to carry the entire weight of 18 of the past 10 years’ biggest films as a villain requires a special balance of physical power and thoughtfulness that Brolin has proved himself a master of exercising.
Josh Brolin as Cable in this year’s Deadpool 2
One of the biggest faults of Deadpool 2, which came out a mere couple weeks after Infinity War, was its relative lack of Brolin’s Cable. Here however Brolin does more than perfectly embody the stupidly muscular character known and loved in the comics, he makes it work within the confines of a Deadpool movie. Once again badassery aside, the man is genuinely funny and ridicules his macho image at every turn. Consider the ChapStick scene, which may or may not have intentionally occurred as Deadpool himself was literally emasculated, regenerating the entire lower half of his body. Thanos’s obsession was balance and for Cable, Brolin applies the same balance to his character so that we as an audience can accept him as one of the film’s final heroes, even if he begins as an antagonist and even if the film itself doesn’t dedicate enough time to fully realise him.
Related: Deadpool 2 review
Sicario: Day of the Soldado is hardly comparable to two of this year’s biggest superhero blockbusters and it’s too early to tell whether or not audiences will treat it with the same love that the first garnered. 2015’s original, helmed by none other than Denis Villeneuve, brought a sense of art to the action genre, all the while making a damning statement on the players in the war on drugs. Yes, the Mexican cartels are despicable, deplorable and inhumanly merciless, but a pivotal scene in the original ends with a cartel boss asking Alejandro (Benicio del Toro) whom he thinks they learned their brutality from. The answer is the United States, signifying that in this war there is no good and evil, just chaos between monsters. While the first Sicario climaxed through Kate’s (Emily Blunt) shock of this revelation, its sequel removes her entirely from the equation, leaving the playing field to the monsters alone.
Josh Brolin plays Matt Graver, a high-ranking CIA operative determined to stop the cartels by any means necessary and from his first scene in the film you realise exactly what that means. It is difficult to delve into detail without spoiling key plot points but Graver is almost the inverse to Deadpool 2’s Cable as we’re meant to support his goal up until we see the lengths he is willing to go to achieve it. And yet for the third time it is Brolin’s ability to navigate dualities that is most essential. The man’s character may be unrelentingly ruthless and perhaps just as evil as the cartels he is trying to stop, but in spite of that he’s charming as hell, providing some of the very few but beautifully timed laughs that outside of his character are justifiably nowhere to be found.
Related: Avengers: Infinity War review
Examining Brolin’s career shows how much an actor can use their own star image to benefit their performance, and if the rumors are true we’ll next see him on Hulu, playing a soulless movie star named Josh Brolin (this is genuine news), showing us he’s not afraid to push the boundaries of his established persona further and further. He is proof that certain actors have their own personal art to bring to every work, whether through the embracement or subversion of their own auteurist qualities, as he brilliantly escapes the pigeonhole that so many actors of a similar hyper-masculine physique remain trapped in. If there were ever a time to be excited to find out exactly what Josh Brolin will do next, that time is now.
Sicario 2: Soldado is now playing nationwide.
