Caleb Landry Jones brings physical and vocal commitment to difficult outsiders, and the effort is worth taking seriously. In Get Out, though, he makes the danger so plain that there is too little left to discover.
Fi1m perspective
Caleb Landry Jones makes Jeremy Armitage seem so plainly threatening that there is little left to wonder about. In Jordan Peele’s Get Out (2017), that is a drawback: a film built on awkward encounters needs us to be unsure how to read the people in them. We felt less uneasy around Jeremy than we wanted to, because Jones signals the danger too insistently. Daniel Kaluuya gives Chris an uncertainty that Jones’s performance could use. We recommend the film strongly, with a reservation about how broadly some of its supporting parts are played.
The unsettling figure has become a recurring assignment. After a small part in No Country for Old Men (2007), Banshee in X-Men: First Class (2011) brought Jones wider exposure, and Antiviral (2012) gave him his first lead. In 2017, Get Out, The Florida Project and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri established him as a conspicuous supporting presence.
In Martin McDonagh’s Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017), Jones plays Red Welby in an ensemble we found persuasive. The film is uneven, its sharp dialogue sometimes followed by demands for sympathy that the characters have not earned. Frances McDormand is the reason we recommend it, but the cast gives us reason to stay with the writing even when it hurries us along. Our objection to Jeremy Armitage need not become an objection to every odd or uncomfortable man Jones plays.
He moved into leads including The Outpost (2019) and Nitram (2021). His collaborators include Brandon Cronenberg, Justin Kurzel and Jim Jarmusch; there are opportunities here for more than another variation on the disturbing outsider. We do not need every performance to be quiet, and a forceful presence can earn its place in an ensemble. What we want from Jones is a little longer to make up our own minds about the man he is playing.
Biography
Caleb Landry Jones is an American actor and musician. Born on 7 December 1989 in Garland, Texas, he grew up in Richardson and began acting professionally with a small role in the Coen brothers' No Country for Old Men (2007). He appeared in television series including Friday Night Lights and Breaking Bad before taking supporting film roles.
Jones gained wider recognition for his performances in 2017, playing Jeremy Armitage in Get Out and Red Welby in Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. The latter earned the cast a Screen Actors Guild Award. His other notable credits include Banshee in X-Men: First Class (2011) and the lead role of Martin Bryant in Nitram (2021), for which he received the Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Actor and an AACTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role. He has also released several albums of experimental psychedelic rock.
