William Fichtner

The smile is the thing to watch in The Underneath (1995). William Fichtner’s Tommy Dundee seems pleased to be threatening someone, and there is nothing reassuring about his friendliness. We felt a stir of interest when he smiled through a threat, because this otherwise chilly film had given us someone whose next move mattered. Steven Soderbergh gets a forceful performance from him, but the central character remains too empty to hold our attention; Fichtner makes his scenes count without solving that problem.

The move into films in the mid-1990s put that intensity to work in ensembles, including Michael Mann’s Heat (1995), in which he played Roger Van Zant. Armageddon (1998) and Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight (2008) followed, the latter giving him a single scene as a bank manager. These parts fit a recurring pattern: men with authority, or men prepared to enforce their wishes. The danger of such casting is that an actor becomes a familiar warning sign before he has spoken.

Kent, the blind astronomer he plays in Robert Zemeckis’s Contact (1997), is a useful reminder that his work extends beyond those jobs. That film earns our recommendation through Jodie Foster’s persuasive urgency and the excitement of discovery, though the repeated speeches about science and belief slow it down. We would choose it over The Underneath as a film, without making extravagant claims for Fichtner’s contribution. Dundee is the stronger reason to watch an individual actor, but we cannot recommend the whole film as readily.

Television gave him a longer stretch as Alexander Mahone, the FBI agent in Prison Break (2005), rather than another brief appearance in a crowded film. The regular role made use of his intensity over time, a sensible development for an actor so often employed to make a quick impression. We would still like more parts that do not arrive with authority or danger already attached. Leading roles alone would not necessarily help; the writing needs to give him more to do than establish who is in charge. Try The Underneath for Dundee, but be prepared to care less about the man at its centre.