NO MORE MR BAD GUY
Just heard the sad news that screen actor Michael Madsen died today at the age of 67. Though he will forever be associated with Quentin Tarantino—and for good reason—my mind immediately shot back to a few weeks ago, when I showed my daughter Ridley Scott's Thelma & Louise for the first time.
What struck me about Madsen's performance in Thelma & Louise (which, coincidentally, also features fellow Reservoir Dog Harvey Keitel) was the subtle humanity he brought to the small role of Jimmy, Louise's boyfriend, in a film otherwise filled with deliberately awful male figures. Though Jimmy is clearly flawed—he shows a fiery temper when he can’t fully grasp the emotional turmoil Louise (Susan Sarandon) is experiencing on her road trip gone wrong—he ultimately proves himself to be a loyal partner who comes through when she needs him most. The interplay between him and Sarandon is a delight, and the mileage on their relationship’s speedometer is apparent without requiring more than a look or a sigh.
It's clear that Madsen was an actor whose natural charisma and laid-back charm allowed him to play his roles in a subtle, grounded way—no wild gestures or over-the-top expressions. And it’s for that reason he so brilliantly succeeded in playing the psychopathic Mr. Blonde in Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs, that groundbreaking debut feature which gave a shot in the arm to the heist/crime genre and established a refreshing new direction in character and dialogue—one that allowed both story and actors to revel in long takes and expansive, stylised speech.
Ironically, Madsen may have had the quietest role in the talkiest of pictures, which only further proved that he possessed an almost old-fashioned movie star quality—something that harks back to the 1940s and ’50s—allowing him to assert his character’s menace with mere presence alone, without needing the reams of dialogue afforded to Mr. White (Keitel), Mr. Pink (Buscemi), or Mr. Orange (Tim Roth). Sometimes, it seemed all he needed to bring tension to a scene was a carton of soda, a straw, and some ice slushing around in the bottom. In many senses, he was a minimalist—and that’s why I’ll always get a thrill watching how he does the very least to achieve the very most.
Like a predator waiting patiently for his moment to strike, Madsen is chillingly at ease in the skin of Mr. Blonde, playing a man who enjoys torturing a cop so much he dances while doing it—resulting in one of the most famous scenes in ’90s cinema.
It was a scene that encapsulated the essence of Tarantino: cool, scary, and accompanied by a jukebox soundtrack that forever changes how you hear the song he uses—just as the actor he chooses (in this instance, Madsen) becomes forever entwined in these moments of cinematic magic.
Madsen will be missed—but never forgotten.