Ron Silver makes quick thinking worth watching. His alertness and verbal agility are a particular pleasure when the script gives him a problem to solve, though clever talk can become too enjoyable for a film's own good.
Fi1m perspective
In Reversal of Fortune (1990), Ron Silver makes a discussion of evidence feel like something happening. His Alan Dershowitz thinks through a problem with an alertness that gives Barbet Schroeder's dryly funny legal drama a welcome change of energy. We enjoyed these exchanges because he makes the thinking itself engaging, without asking us to admire the lawyer for being clever. He can hold our attention through an explanation, a useful skill in a film full of disputed evidence.
The role brought wider notice after supporting film work through the 1980s and an important stage part as Charlie Fox in David Mamet's Speed-the-Plow (1988). Silver was often cast as intelligent professionals and authority figures, with verbal agility that could be used to persuade or manipulate. Blue Steel (1990) drew on the more menacing possibilities of his charm.
Nicholas Kazan's screenplay gives him material worth listening to in Reversal of Fortune. The writing understands how a question about evidence can become a question about the person presenting it, so Silver has more to do than deliver information clearly. He keeps the discussion lively, but this is also where our reservation about the film begins. The satisfaction of the talk sometimes makes the human cost feel less urgent, and Sunny can seem like an afterthought. We would not blame Silver for being interesting, but Schroeder could have been less willing to let that interest dominate.
Later work continued to make use of his authority, including Bruno Gianelli, his recurring role in The West Wing from 2001 to 2006. Michael Mann's Ali (2001) cast him as Muhammad Ali's trainer Angelo Dundee. Sidney Lumet's Find Me Guilty (2006) put him back in a courtroom as Judge Sidney Finestein, another part for a man who could sound as though he knew his business. Start with Reversal of Fortune, where a good screenplay gives that intelligence something to work on.
Biography
Ron Silver was an American actor. He was born Ronald Arthur Silver on 2 July 1946 in New York City and died there on 15 March 2009.
He studied at the State University of New York at Buffalo and St John's University, and trained at the Herbert Berghof Studio and the Actors Studio. Silver appeared in films including Romancing the Stone (1984), Silkwood (1983), Blue Steel (1990), Timecop (1994), The Arrival (1996), Ali (2001) and Find Me Guilty (2006). He played Alan Dershowitz in Reversal of Fortune (1990) and had a recurring role as Bruno Gianelli in the television series The West Wing (1999–2006).
On stage, Silver won the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play for Speed-the-Plow (1988). He served as president of the Actors' Equity Association from 1991 to 2000.
