Colin Farrell is a truly unpredictable actor unafraid to experiment with just about anything. Whether it's a historical epic, a massive tentpole franchise, an eccentric comedy, a subversive horror film, or a romantic melodrama, Farrell excels at many genres. He’ll star in a major blockbuster, a tiny indie film, a prestige television series, and a direct-to-video thriller in succession, and Farrell never seems to care about the size of the role either.
Farrell isn’t afraid to take bold swings, and certainly not every risk has paid off in his favor. In fact, it's the inconsistency of film quality matched with his versatility that makes Farrell such an exciting actor to watch- you never know what you're going to get. This year alone he’s starred in the critically-acclaimed sci-fi indie After Yang, led the historical AMC miniseries The North Water, and popped up for a random supporting turn in the bombed YA project Voyagers. Farrell’s upcoming turn as The Penguin in The Batman is sure to be another interesting part, but some of his most fascinating work has been undervalued. These seven underrated performances speak to different aspects of Farrell’s wild career.
Phone Booth
One of the best films from the late great Joel Schumacher, Phone Booth is Farrell in a completely vulnerable leading role. As dogmatic New York publicist Stuart Shepard, Farrell isn’t playing an inherently likeable character, but he’s caught in an unbelievably strenuous situation when he becomes trapped in a phone booth at the mercy of a mysterious caller (Kiefer Sutherland). Threatened with an impending sniper attack, Stuart is forced to recant his sins and call up old acquaintances, but he’s also trying to save lives when he learns that any false move could result in a massacre. It's a challenge to be at the center of the frame for virtually the entire runtime, and both Farrell and Schumachers’ frantic energy create 81 minutes of nonstop adrenaline.
Daredevil
Farrell is the only person involved with 2003’s Daredevil that knows exactly what movie he’s in. Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner were caught in a botched romance with no chemistry, and they’re either overcooking the melodrama or not having enough fun with the superhero antics. Farrell simply dials everything to 11 with his performance as Bullseye, going full maniac and noting his own absurd accuracy. Having him ridiculously kill an annoying flight passenger with a lethal flick of a peanut is the type of zaniness that’s welcome between boring passages of Matt Murdock recounting his origin story. Farrell doesn’t try to develop the character’s motivation beyond Daredevil making him miss his mark. For a nuanced depiction of Bullseye, check out Wilson Bethel’s performance in the Netflix series, but for a leather-bound stylized farce of the post-Matrix era, Farrell is your guy.
Crazy Heart
Crazy Heart was swept up in the awards circuit and finally earned Jeff Bridges the Oscar he’d been long overdue, but as a result the film’s supporting players tended to get overlooked. Farrell has a fairly sizable role as country music superstar Tommy Sweet, a former mentee of Bridges’s "Bad" Blake that’s now far surpassed his idol. What could’ve been a stereotypical relationship is played quite sincerely; Sweet is still in awe of Blake and offers to support his struggling career by asking him to write songs for his upcoming tour, claiming that Blake can still write better than anyone. Farrell is able to show Sweet’s generosity without shedding his performative masculinity, and a moment as simple as insisting to a fan that Blake’s autograph is the one he actually wants is heartwarming. He’s also a great singer, and even for those adverse to country music, his duet with Bridges of “Fallin’ and Flyin’” is an impressive cover.
Horrible Bosses
Although it's slightly more twisted than studio comedies generally get, Horrible Bosses is a fairly by-the-numbers ensemble romp. If the three leads Jason Bateman, Jason Sudekis, and Charlie Day are mostly coasting on their inherent charisma, Horrible Bosses drew most of its attention with the uncharacteristically comic cruelty of the three titular bosses. Kevin Spacey’s work obviously hasn’t aged well and Jennifer Aniston’s depiction of sexual harassment may have rubbed some viewers the wrong way, but once again, Farrell knows exactly what type of movie he’s in. As the entitled son of Sudekis’s kindly former boss Donald Sutherland, Farrell digs into the character’s pent up resentment by taking it out on his inherited employees, but he’s also unafraid to just be weird. This is a coked-out hooligan with a comb over who's obsessed with Chinese dragons; director Seth Gordon clearly just let Farrell do whatever he wanted.
Saving Mr. Banks
Saving Mr. Banks is a problematic film. While Emma Thompson is charismatic in even the most manipulative of Oscar-bait, it’s blatantly inaccurate revisionist history where Disney frames its own product and founder as the hero. P.L. Travers was infuriated by the cinematic adaptation of her novel Mary Poppins and it's hard to reckon with a film that depicts the exact opposite, but the moments removed from corporate promotion during Travers’ childhood are somewhat touching. Farrell plays her father Travers Robert Goff, a loving man she idolizes despite the devastating impact his alcoholism has on their struggling family. Farrell plays the addiction sensitivity within the confines of a PG-13 family film, and his earnestness makes it clear that he’s framed from selective memories of a child who doesn’t always see the larger picture. It’s nuanced emotional work in a film aiming to be a broad, tear jerking crowd pleaser.
Solace
You probably haven’t heard of this direct-to-video thriller. Originally written as a sequel to Se7en, Solace actually debuted at 2015’s Toronto International Film Festival, but was caught up within the Relativity Media collapse and eventually dumped onto VOD and DVD/Blu-Ray by Lionsgate Premiere. It's a pretty standard serial killer mystery with a supernatural twist, with Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Abbie Cornish giving respectable enough turns as FBI special agents that enlist a psychic (Anthony Hopkins) to help them track down a serial killer. Solace is more dull and familiar than it is incompetent, but it actually gets pretty interesting during the last twenty minutes when Farrell shows up out of no where to play the unhinged psychopath Charles Ambrose. Farrell maximizes his few scenes (which are bizarrely spliced together with strange editing choices) and reads every line with ludicrous intensity. If you can stand the unnecessary camera zooms, it's worth skipping through Solace just for the highlights of Farrell’s unhinged performance.
Widows
Steven McQueen’s Widows is one of the best movies of the past decade that no one seemed to know what to do with. There’s really nothing like it; it's a prestige genre film from one of the greatest filmmakers working today that provides caper movie thrills through the prism of systematic racism, sexism, police brutality, and corrupt politician campaigning. Widows boasts one of the best ensembles in recent memory, but among the terrific performances Farrell is a standout. Jack Mulligan is the privileged heir of a legacy political dynasty who all but inherited his Chicago mayoral campaign. Farrell doesn’t overcook his entitlement, thus making Mulligan more infuriating, and he’s not so clueless that the film’s shocking plot twists strain believability. The scenes with his retiring father (Robert Duvall) allude to years of hardship, and both hint at a fraught history that’s never explicitly spelled out. In one of the film's stand out scenes, Farrell captures the plasticity of a politician whose public empathy masks a complete disregard for the underrepresented constituents that support him.