Robert Aramayo

In Palestine 36 (2025), Robert Aramayo’s Captain Wingate is too easy to read: the broad villainy leaves little to discover in the man. We were frustrated by the performance because he seemed less convincing than the people around him. Annemarie Jacir’s ensemble gives the drama much of its force, so this lapse stands out. Her writing works better when it allows uncertainty and conflicting pressures to emerge without explaining them. Aramayo pushes towards caricature here, and the part gives him too little to push against.

His earlier work often placed him within an ensemble rather than asking him to carry a film. As Turk in Tom Ford’s Nocturnal Animals (2016), he was part of an excellent cast in a gripping, cruel thriller. Ford lets the links between the stories become too insistent, but the fear and hurt remain difficult to shake. It is a useful early credit, not yet a reason to build an evening around his name.

Television has given him more room. He played young Ned Stark in Game of Thrones from 2016, then Elrond in The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power from 2022. Both have a grounded, human quality that makes the fantasy approachable without asking us to take its characters less seriously. The psychological thriller Behind Her Eyes (2021), in which he plays Rob Hoyle, broadened that television work.

In I Swear (2025), as John Davidson, the emphasis shifts to a leading film performance built on research and precise physical and vocal work. His intelligence and charm matter as much as those technical demands. The conventional biographical storytelling is a reservation about the film, not a reason to dismiss what he does within it. Start with his Elrond, rather than taking Wingate as the whole case against him.