Kevin Bacon

In MaXXXine (2024), Kevin Bacon's private investigator John Labat has a stained suit, a battered-looking nose and a wheedling drawl. He seems pleased to be disliked, and Bacon lets that pleasure show without asking us to like him. We laughed whenever he appeared, because his enjoyment of being objectionable made even the drawl funny. Ti West gets a lively supporting performance, but it exposes a problem with his slasher. Bacon is amusing while the film struggles to make anyone frightening.

That willingness to be disagreeable suits the career he chose after Footloose (1984), his breakthrough as a leading man. The turn came with JFK (1991), when character parts began to take precedence over attempts to remain a leading man. His ensemble work includes Apollo 13 (1995) and Clint Eastwood's Mystic River (2003). Bacon has described character acting as the work he always felt suited to, and those later choices make sense on that basis. The recent performances suggest how much he can get done without occupying the centre of a film.

Sam Esmail's Leave the World Behind (2023) makes good use of his ability to establish a character quickly. As Danny, a suspicious neighbour, he needs only a brief appearance to make us want him to stay. Esmail's screenplay keeps having other characters explain what they stand for, at a length that weakens the tension. Bacon makes Danny's distrust interesting enough without all that explanation. We would not recommend the film on his contribution alone, but his departure makes its weaknesses harder to overlook.

His presence is not, by itself, a reliable guide to what to watch. The series Sirens (2025), in which he plays Peter Kell, is the more rewarding choice among these titles, chiefly for its three leads and its strained relationship between sisters. Its changes of tone can be clumsy, but there is more to hold our interest beyond an individual performance. Choose MaXXXine for Bacon, with considerably lower expectations of the story.