Gary Busey

In Point Break (1991), Gary Busey's Agent Angelo Pappas talks with enough force to make dialogue feel like another action scene. Kathryn Bigelow's thriller makes surfing and bank robbery seductive, and his performance adds a less graceful sort of pleasure. We laughed because his conversations seem to cost him so much physical effort. He pushes the scenes along, keeping the comedy within the action rather than asking for a pause to admire it.

That supporting presence can obscure the earlier leading actor. The Buddy Holly Story (1978), his breakthrough as Buddy Holly, put his musical abilities to work in a physically demanding performance. The move into action-film supporting parts through the 1980s and 1990s gave him other uses for that commitment, including Mr. Joshua in Lethal Weapon (1987) and Commander Krill in Under Siege (1992). Those menacing characters suit an actor whose forcefulness is often the first thing we notice. The danger is that it becomes the only thing.

It matters that Point Break is already so willing to get carried away. Its dialogue sometimes overreaches, but the chases justify our enthusiasm, and Busey's appetite for a scene belongs in that company. Lori Petty's Tyler Endicott offers welcome directness; his Pappas brings the agitation, giving Bigelow two ways to keep Keanu Reeves and Patrick Swayze from dominating every exchange. We would not want him made more restrained here, though we would hesitate to prescribe the same performance for a quieter film.

His later character work includes Bill Dayton in David Lynch's Lost Highway (1997), though we would not choose that film as the place to begin with Busey. Our broader reservation concerns roles that ask for eccentricity and little else: his intensity can become distracting when the character offers nothing beyond it. Repeated oddball casting gives us less reason to pay attention, however much effort he puts in. For an introduction, take Point Break and allow the dialogue its excesses.