Jesse Plemons makes a patient explanation sound more troubling than a threat. We rate the precision of his quiet performances, though the habit of casting him as the unnerving ordinary man risks becoming too familiar.
Fi1m perspective
In Bugonia (2025), Jesse Plemons explains an alien invasion to his captive with the patience of a teacher. Teddy is certain the woman chained in his cellar is an alien, and Plemons sees no need to shout. Emma Stone's chief executive tries to negotiate, giving his calm certainty something to push against. Yorgos Lanthimos gets one of Plemons's strongest performances here, even when the film starts explaining what the actors have already made clear.
The route to these leading parts runs through ensemble television: Landry Clarke in Friday Night Lights (2006), then Todd Alquist in Breaking Bad (2012). The first was his breakthrough; the second helped establish the association between his politeness and menace. Leading parts followed, including I'm Thinking of Ending Things (2020) and the Lanthimos films, alongside supporting work for Scorsese and Campion. The risk now is repetition: casting Plemons as another quiet, peculiar man can make his presence an early warning.
Kinds of Kindness (2024) shows how much he can do within those limits, particularly as Robert, an employee whose boss dictates the details of his life. Plemons fixes a little smile on his face and keeps looking towards Willem Dafoe for approval. We laughed uneasily at Robert's failing smile, because Plemons makes the loss of his boss's approval look like a physical difficulty.
Robbie Ryan's hard daylight and Anthony Gasparro's anonymous offices make Robert's submission look ordinary, which helps Plemons keep the absurdity believable. Jerskin Fendrix's abrupt piano chords and choral interruptions provide another source of awkward comedy. But Yorgos Mavropsaridis's clean editing leaves all three stories too long, and even Plemons cannot make the repeated lesson about obedience worth 164 minutes.
His restraint is useful, but it cannot repair a film's structure. In Killers of the Flower Moon (2023), his Tom White has a mild voice and a hat he never quite knows where to put, but the scenes lose warmth when attention shifts away from Lily Gladstone's Mollie. The film needs her at its centre. Start with Bugonia for Plemons, and allow for a director who explains more than he needs to.
Biography
Jesse Plemons is an American actor. He began his career as a child actor and gained recognition for his role as Landry Clarke in the NBC series Friday Night Lights (2006–2011). He later portrayed Todd Alquist in the fifth season of the AMC series Breaking Bad (2012–2013) and its sequel film El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie (2019).
Plemons has appeared in supporting roles in films including The Master (2012), Bridge of Spies (2015), Game Night (2018), The Irishman (2019), Judas and the Black Messiah (2021) and Killers of the Flower Moon (2023). He starred in Other People (2016) and I'm Thinking of Ending Things (2020). For his performance in The Power of the Dog (2021), he received an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor. In Kinds of Kindness (2024), he played three roles and won the Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Actor. He stars as Teddy in Bugonia (2025).
