Michael Douglas makes men who expect to get their way worth watching, even when they are poor company. We rate him most when he lets their sadness show without asking us to excuse what they do.
Fi1m perspective
In Falling Down (1993), Michael Douglas speaks as though his unhappiness ought to settle the matter. His D-Fens offers little charm, and Douglas keeps the anger low-key enough for us to hear the stubborn conviction underneath. We were unnerved by how little he did to make this man agreeable, even as his sadness became plain. Joel Schumacher's film grows muddled when it tries to explain society, but Douglas makes a specific man worth watching without making him good company.
His run of leading roles accelerated with Romancing the Stone (1984), Wall Street (1987) and Fatal Attraction (1987). The thrillers that followed, including Basic Instinct (1992), made male anxiety familiar territory. These parts suit an actor who can make a flawed man's thinking comprehensible without making him pleasant. They also leave him exposed when a script mistakes that man's complaints for insight.
Steven Soderbergh has found several uses for that authority, not all equally rewarding. We admire Traffic (2000), but Douglas's Robert Wakefield gets speeches that spell out what he has learnt, and we find ourselves waiting for the film to return to Mexico. The repeated explanations leave him too little to act. In Haywire (2011), his Alex Coblenz folds his arms and lets the casting establish his importance; it is a small job, efficiently done.
He gives Soderbergh considerably more in Behind the Candelabra (2013), our clearest recommendation for Douglas. As Liberace, he plays the piano at home for one guest as though he were entertaining two thousand. The soft, coaxing voice and the smile he can switch off show a performer attending carefully to the person in front of him, working out what they want. The second half follows a familiar path, but the small calculations in Douglas's performance keep it interesting.
The later supporting parts can be meagre. In Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania (2023), his Hank Pym talks to ants, a thin use of an actor so good at assessing people. Start with Behind the Candelabra; there is more for him to do at that piano.
Biography
Michael Douglas is an American actor and film producer. Born Michael Kirk Douglas on 25 September 1944 in New Brunswick, New Jersey, he is the elder son of actors Kirk Douglas and Diana Dill. He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in drama from the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Douglas first gained prominence playing a homicide inspector in the television series The Streets of San Francisco (1972–1976). He produced One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975), which won the Academy Award for Best Picture. He received the Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance as Gordon Gekko in Wall Street (1987).
His film roles include Robert Wakefield in Traffic (2000), Alex Coblenz in Haywire (2011) and Dr. Hank Pym in the Marvel Cinematic Universe films Ant-Man (2015), Ant-Man and the Wasp (2018) and Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania (2023). He portrayed Liberace in Behind the Candelabra (2013), for which he won a Primetime Emmy Award.
