Logan Marshall-Green

The first thing we remember of Logan Marshall-Green is a hoodie. In Prometheus (2012) he plays Charlie Holloway, one of the scientists Ridley Scott sends to the far side of the galaxy, and he spends much of the voyage inside it, shoulders forward, mouth set, like a man who has just been told the trip is off. We called him a sulk in a hoodie and we stand by that. It is one note held for a long time, and on a ship that also carries Michael Fassbender's android it never wins our attention back once Fassbender has taken it. We found Holloway tiresome, and then found ourselves watching Fassbender behind him, which is not where a part that size is meant to leave the eye.

That is the film most people met him in, and it is a poor one to judge him by. Before it came a decade of stage work and television guest parts: Law & Order: SVU in 2003, recurring turns in 24 and The O.C. in 2005. After it, instead of the studio leads a Ridley Scott picture usually buys, came smaller films with him at the centre. The Invitation (2015) has him as Will, a man carrying a loss into a room full of people. Upgrade (2018), for Leigh Whannell, casts him as Grey Trace in a part built almost entirely on the body. Quarry (2016) gave him a television lead as a Vietnam veteran turned hitman, and in 2019 he wrote and directed Adopt a Highway.

We have not reviewed those films, so we will not pretend to weigh them. What is consistently said of them is instructive, though. Critics keep noticing the same two things: a physical commitment that prefers doing the stunt to standing in front of the effect, and a willingness to play men who are wrong, or grieving, or both, without asking to be forgiven for it. That squares with what we saw in Prometheus. The heaviness that swamps Holloway, who has nothing to do but be somebody's colleague in a corridor, is the same heaviness a film about one man alone with his damage can actually use.

The knock on him, and it is a fair one, is that the career has settled into that shape: strong indie leads and studio supporting parts, never quite the front of a big poster. He has said he does not need to be liked but needs to be vital, and the roles bear that out; he is drawn to parts that ask for weight rather than charm. Next comes a big picture, The Odyssey (2026), and a television series, Marshals (2026–). On the evidence of Prometheus, we would put our evening on the smaller one.