Donal Logue plays men who look like they slept in the car and know more than they let on. Given a lead and a partner to talk over, as in Terriers, he is as good as anyone; too often he gets ten minutes.
Fi1m perspective
The scene we keep coming back to is Hank Dolworth alone at a kitchen table in Terriers (2010). For most of the first hour Donal Logue has been talking over his partner, lying to clients and getting laughs, and then Ted Griffin's script leaves him in a room by himself and he stops performing. Nothing much happens. He sits there. It stopped our laugh dead, and it did so because Logue had spent the hour making Hank funnier than a man in his position has any right to be, so that when the noise stopped we could see what it had been covering. That is what he does. The charm is real, and it is also a way of not being looked at.
He came up the odd way: small film parts in the early 1990s, then a run of MTV interstitials as Jimmy the Cab Driver that got him noticed, then the vampire Quinn in Blade (1998), a part that grew during shooting, though our own review of that film had its hands full with Wesley Snipes and the effects. The lead came with The Tao of Steve (2000), as Dex, and five seasons of Grounded for Life (2001–2005) as Sean Finnerty followed. After that the pattern set: supporting parts in other people's stories, Ken Narlow in Zodiac (2007), King Horik in Vikings (2013–2014), and five years as Harvey Bullock in Gotham (2014–2019).
What he does best needs someone to do it with. In Terriers that is Michael Raymond-James, whose Britt asks the question Hank is already answering, and the interrogations work because Logue plays a man who has read the end of his own story and is in no hurry to get there. He is slow, dry and watchful; he lies quickly and tells the truth slowly. He has said of Hank, "I know this guy. I feel like I kind of am this guy," and it shows in the way he never once asks us to like him. In Blade he is the villain in Snipes's film, and our review, fairly, spent its time on Snipes.
The complaint is the one critics have made for years: a man who can carry a lead has spent most of his career further down the cast list, and the series that did let him lead did not last. Terriers got thirteen episodes; Life (2007–2009) got two seasons. We do not think this is his fault, and it may not be a fault at all. There are worse careers than being the person a director calls when a scene needs somebody who looks as if he has lived in it.
Given another kitchen table, he would sit down at it and undo us again. Somebody should give him one.
Biography
Donal Francis Logue is a Canadian-American actor. Born on 27 February 1966 in Ottawa, Ontario, he was raised in California and studied history at Harvard University. After graduating, he joined the Cornerstone Theatre Company and began working in stage and screen productions.
Logue's film roles include Quinn in Blade (1998), Dex in The Tao of Steve (2000), for which he received the Sundance Film Festival Special Jury Prize, Dan Scott in The Patriot (2000), Ken Narlow in Zodiac (2007), and Mack in Ghost Rider (2007).
On television he has played Sean Finnerty in Grounded for Life (2001–2005), Harvey Bullock in Gotham (2014–2019), King Horik in Vikings (2013–2014), and Declan Murphy in Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.
