Josh Duhamel

In Ransom Canyon (2025), Josh Duhamel makes a brooding man worth watching even when the writing gives him little else to do. His Staten Kirkland is the strongest reason to try April Blair’s drama, though we cannot recommend the series on his account alone. We warmed to the romance because his attraction to Minka Kelly’s Quinn O’Grady is more persuasive than the complications surrounding it. For a while, the actors keep us interested in a relationship the dialogue has done too little to establish.

His leading role as Danny McCoy in Las Vegas (2003–2008) established him on television, while his film debut came in Win a Date with Tad Hamilton (2004). Transformers (2007) then gave him Captain William Lennox, a part he reprised in three sequels through 2017. Romantic comedies and dramas remained part of the work alongside those action roles. With Ransom Canyon, the television leading man and the romantic lead come together.

Michael Bay’s Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009), with Duhamel as Major Lennox, is a poor film with convincing machines. The fighting becomes tedious, the jokes are crude and the storytelling is muddled. His four films with Bay made the soldier a recurring part of his screen identity, though that tells us more about his casting than his abilities. With the effects doing almost all the work here, this sequel is a poor place to begin an acquaintance with him.

There is a danger in casting him as the attractive, dependable man and treating those qualities as a complete character. In Ransom Canyon, the tiresome division of emotional labour and predictable plotting leave too much resting on the romance, however capable Kelly is alongside him. Duhamel can make the brooding appealing, but he cannot supply all the missing dialogue and characterisation. For his next romantic lead, a little less reliance on his ability to look troubled would be welcome.