Alessandro Nivola

In Kraven the Hunter (2024), Alessandro Nivola's Aleksei Sytsevich has a medical condition and enough nervous energy to suggest that being a villain is rather more trouble than he expected. We laughed because Nivola plays that agitation as though someone has allowed him a comedy inside J.C. Chandor's lumbering action film. Alongside Russell Crowe, he provides one of its few pleasures. He cannot fix a script that explains everything twice, but he can make a supporting character worth watching while it does.

Face/Off (1997), his film debut, gave him Pollux Troy in John Woo's identity-swap thriller. We would recommend that film well ahead of Kraven the Hunter, though its chief acting pleasure is the exchange between John Travolta and Nicolas Cage. Nivola's career has largely continued through supporting work, from Jurassic Park III (2001) to American Hustle (2013). He has described a shift towards choosing directors, having been dissatisfied with some earlier jobs. That makes sense for an actor who depends on what a film allows its smaller characters to do.

Brady Corbet's The Brutalist (2024) gives him Attila, the architect's cousin, in its opening stretch, a small but consequential part with complicated family ties. Those complications suit an actor often cast as men with hidden resentments, and give him more to work with than merely standing beside the lead. Our reservations concern the second half; the opening belongs to the more assured stretch of a film carried by Adrien Brody.

Almodóvar gives him a policeman's part in The Room Next Door (2024), a film we found hampered by dialogue that sounds written. Such credits make choosing by director understandable, but they do not guarantee that the actor will have much worth saying. Accent work and physical changes recur in his roles, but it is the humour he finds in Aleksei's nerves that makes us want more of him. We would welcome another comic villain, preferably with better dialogue around him.