Michael Madsen

Michael Madsen’s Mr Blonde arrives in Reservoir Dogs (1992) sipping a drink, as though the men arguing in the warehouse can wait until he has finished it. Among all those raised voices, his stillness makes him the person we watch. We found his calm unnerving; arriving with a drink makes the warehouse panic seem of no concern to him. The rasp and squint were useful, but his willingness to take his time made this performance frightening.

Thelma & Louise (1991) had already given him a gentler supporting part as Jimmy, before Mr Blonde established him as a screen threat. Donnie Brasco (1997), with Madsen as the suspicious mobster Sonny Black, offered another use for that watchfulness. The work outside Tarantino is patchy, and the repeated casting as criminals and tough men can become wearing. We would not recommend following it indiscriminately. A more rewarding return to Madsen came with Kill Bill: Vol. 2 (2004), in which Tarantino lets Budd be humiliated at work.

Budd takes a dressing-down from the strip club owner who has cut his shifts, and Madsen does not give him a defiant comeback. He looks accustomed to it, which makes the scene more uncomfortable. The trailer furnished by David Wasco, Cao Juiping and Yohei Taneda looks assembled from other people’s cast-offs. Those shabby surroundings help Madsen make Budd’s reduced circumstances convincing without asking for our sympathy. The film runs too long, but slowing down to spend time with Budd is not the problem.

In The Hateful Eight (2015), Joe Gage sits in a corner writing in a journal, and the familiar reticence is back. Madsen belongs in that suspicious company, though the ensemble cannot cure a film we found far too long and insistently cruel. There is less for him to do here than as Budd, whose humiliation gives us something beyond the familiar threat to watch. Start with Reservoir Dogs, but leave room for Kill Bill: Vol. 2: Budd deserves more attention than his employer gives him.