Nipped in the Bud Pt. II

JUDD NELSON

In the 1985 New York magazine article that coined the expression "The Brat Pack," Judd Nelson was labeled "the most overrated" member of the clique. The comment went unheeded--Nelson had just achieved popular and critical success in the role of his life, the obnoxious tough guy in John Hughes's The Breakfast Club. The same year, he joined with the Packers in St. Elmo's Fire, a money-making portrait of the kind of trendy yuppie lifestyle that would not survive the decade. Nelson peevishly disdained the very label that gave him any kind of identity at all as an actor. After all, this guy acts with his nose: his flaring nostrils indicate a wider range of emotions than the rest of him has so far been able to project. Apart from this, he seems to believe drama is largely a matter of decibels: when tension or emotions in a scene flare up, he switches from loud to LOUDER. He's got two acting modes, glowering and sarcastic (yes, he can mix them), and called upon both to little effect in Blue City, his first solo star vehicle in which he plays a young man out to avenge the murder of his father. It's widely regarded as one of the worst films of 1986, thanks partly to Nelson's utter failure to act--even a little bit--even with his nose.

Next, in From the Hip, he played a hot-shot young lawyer whose obnoxious (read: loud) courtroom antics, far from getting him disbarred, make him an unlikely media hero--a case, perhaps, of art imitating life. Here, as in St. Elmo's, he's a yuppie who worries about compromising his values in his quest for success. (Nelson fails to convince us that he or his characters have values worth compromising.) Neither of these critical bombs made money, so Nelson, like many in the new "New Hollywood," became a champion of "causes." Flying off on "fact-finding missions" to the Soviet Union isn't a bad way to avoid the spectacle of your own sinking career if you've got the cash--because Lord knows you have the time. Work-wise, Nelson's next (and inevitable) journey was to the not-so-exotic world of TV movies, portraying Joe Hunt, the charismatic yet reprehensible leader of the "Billionaire Boys Club," and getting it only half right. Nelson has emerged from TV-land only once in three years, to play a psychotic killer in a B-thriller aptly titled Relentless, in which, with white pancake on his face and huge, dark circles under his eyes, he resembles no one so much as Cesare the somnambulist in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. Can Nelson get beyond his nose at this point? He doesn't have the raw acting skills of a Karl Malden, or the popular appeal of a Jimmy Durante. Nor has anyone ever heard him sing like Barbra Streisand. Although it's clearly time he tried. L.P.

TOM BERENGER

The question here is, does this guy ever turn down work? Not only has Tom Berenger made a lot of movies over the last 13 years, he's made every kind of movie and has played every kind of character, even an ugly guy, which is a stretch. In fact, Berenger has so completely avoided typecasting that he has failed to develop even an amorphous persona. And that, not a failure of talent or charisma, is why he has lost his chance at the Big Fifteen Minutes. Berenger has indeed had his little 15 minutes, but from now on he will probably be the second or third choice for leads in okay movies, and his high points are likely to come in character parts in ensemble pieces (witness this year's Love at Large). There was a time when Berenger looked to be the next hunk movie star. He's no slouch now, but a decade ago his beauty was such that he was cast as the young Paul Newman in the big deal prequel to Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. He'd caused a stir on TV as the prizefighter who did it with his mom (Suzanne Pleshette] in "Flesh and Blood"; and if Butch and Sundance: The Early Days had panned out, he might have had a direction to head in. But it didn't, and perhaps stung by the memory of his humiliating experience as a love object in 1978's In Praise of Older Women, he decided to put on different hats. (After all, he had debuted as the deranged, homosexual murderer of Diane Keaton in Looking for Mr. Goodbar.) So he played a tough soldier in The Dogs of War (1980) and the best-friend foil to Michael Pare in Eddie and the Cruisers, both duds. Then he gave a sharp performance as the embarrassed TV star in the box-office smash The Big Chill (1983), but the bellyflop of the hyped musical Western parody Rustler's Rhapsody (1985) took the wind out of those sails. Then came Fear City in which he plays stripper Melanie Griffith's booking agent!

Platoon in 1986 again reminded us how good Berenger can be. He brought texture and believability to the archetypal bad dude Sgt. Barnes. But he must have lost his compass again because he went on to do straight-to-video Last Rites, a sublimely awful film that reads as some misbegotten Catholic wetdream (he plays a priest duped by whore-in-madonna's-disguise Daphne Zuniga, whom he has sex with, then murders, no kidding). Since then it's been a grab bag: the underwritten, overshot Someone to Watch Over Me, the play-it-with-your-eyes-closed Shoot to Kill, the self-important, nonsensical Betrayed (in which he was superb), and Major League, the Bull-Durham-for-ldiots. Tom Berenger could have been a movie star in the old days, when a studio would have staked out his territory for him. Now he's just a good actor we all like but know better than to plunk down seven bucks for without doing research first. --R.M.

TREAT WILLIAMS

When the Broadway musical Grease launched several careers--including those of John Travolta, Richard Gere, and Barry Bostwick--no one seemed a surer bet for stardom than Treat Williams. Three of the best movie directors certainly thought so: Milos Forman offered him Hair, Steven Spielberg offered 1941, and Sidney Lumet offered Prince of the City. Williams took all three, and therein lies a sad tale. While no one came out of the Spielberg fiasco ahead, Williams gave a star-making performance in Hair: sexy and funny, he could also really sing and dance. But the movie flopped, so no one saw what he could do. Versatile enough to land the coveted lead in Lumet's three-hour study of corrupt cops--a part that called for a young De Niro--Williams turned in a solid performance there too. But when that movie wasn't a hit either, all the advance hype Williams had received for it backfired on him in a way that really had nothing to do with him.

Suddenly Hollywood was no longer offering him A-level scripts (call this the "Three Strikes, You're Out" Syndrome). Had Hair come after Prince of the City instead of before, the last view of Williams before he began slipping into B- movies would have been different: he might have been given romantic comedy parts, and perhaps have climbed back into the major leagues. But the Lumet legacy--and Williams's own desire to be seen as a serious actor--led not to becoming the next De Niro, just co-starring with him (in yet another three-hour flop, Once Upon a Time in America). Then, in an ever-spiralling descent, he began to do second-hand Brando, playing Stanley opposite Ann-Margret's Blanche in the TV version of A Streetcar Named Desire. (Had the pair come along earlier in Hollywood's history, they would have been teamed up in musicals.) In movies like The Pursuit of D.B. Cooper, Flashpoint, Smooth Talk and The Men's Club there's little sign of Williams's gifts--he's just another competent dramatic actor. By the time he reminded the industry of his musical skills--in a 1987 TV special "Happy Birthday Hollywood"--it was too little, too late. Williams is now trapped in talented actor hell, making movies that barely open, and cable TV movies you've never heard of. At 38, he'd be smart to abandon starring roles in bad material in favor of trying his hand at smaller character roles in better films. That's the path that could, with luck, get him back where he belongs. --K.H.

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