Josh Hartnett is most interesting when his reassuring manner starts to look rehearsed. We rate the actor more highly than some of his vehicles: Trap makes a persuasive case for giving him less respectable men to play.
Fi1m perspective
In Trap (2024), Josh Hartnett leaves a small pause before Cooper smiles at a stranger. His fatherly enthusiasm is convincing enough, but he is also checking the exits. M. Night Shyamalan gives him a serial killer at a concert with his daughter, and Hartnett makes the effort to appear ordinary both funny and troubling. We laughed at his improvised lie to a security guard, then felt a chill at how readily we wanted it to work. The performance earns that response by letting us follow each calculation without forgetting the dad.
His early studio parts tended towards the heroic or romantic, with Pearl Harbor (2001) helping to establish the heartthrob image. Ridley Scott's Black Hawk Down (2001) offered a high-profile ensemble role. But the earlier work also includes Trip Fontaine in Sofia Coppola's The Virgin Suicides (1999). We recommend that film for its painfully recognisable teenage longing, with the reservation that the sisters can disappear behind the boys' fascination.
After those studio leads, he became more selective, mixing smaller films and supporting parts with television work such as Penny Dreadful (2014–2016). That gave him alternatives to playing the heroic young man. In Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer (2023), he plays Ernest Lawrence as part of an ensemble. We rate that film highly, but Trap, for all its faults, gives us more to say about how Hartnett holds our attention.
Cinematographer Sayombhu Mukdeeprom keeps us close to Cooper, with doors prominent in the frame and the concert often off to one side. Noëmi Preiswerk's patient editing gives Hartnett time to work through one obstacle before the next appears. Production designer Debbie DeVilla supplies service corridors and stairwells for him to scrutinise, while Herdís Stefánsdóttir's low score leaves room for the songs. The tension comes from having time to notice what he notices.
Trap eventually runs short of plausible plotting, and Hartnett cannot repair it. Our enthusiasm for him should not be mistaken for a recommendation without reservations. Try it for the performance, provided a strong first hour is enough.
Biography
Josh Hartnett is an American actor. Born in Saint Paul, Minnesota, he began his career with a role in the television series Cracker (1997–1998) and made his feature film debut in Halloween H20: 20 Years Later (1998).
He gained prominence with parts in The Virgin Suicides (1999), Pearl Harbor (2001) and Black Hawk Down (2001). Hartnett later appeared in Oppenheimer (2023) as Ernest Lawrence and starred as Cooper in Trap (2024).
