Small Roles...Big Perfomances: The British and The Japanese

Ruth @ Flixchatter comes up with an interesting blogathon.

The idea of this blog-a-thon is to shine a spotlight on the ‘unsung heroes’ if you will, the overlooked performers who add so much richness/entertainment value to the film no matter how brief their appearance is, but yet they don’t get the credit they so deserve.

So here are the general rules:

• Highlight a performance from an actor [classics or contemporary] in a supporting role or cameo, it can be as short as five-minutes, as long as that particular scene is memorable and/or makes an impression on you.
• I’d ask that you choose a performance that was NOT nominated for major awards and as much as possible choose an actor that isn’t generally well-known, the more obscure the better!
• You could choose to do a write-up of ONE or several (up to three to keep things from being too long) performances. It’s up to you how long you’d like it to be, I don’t want to restrict you if you are passionate about a particular scene, but I think 150 – 400 words is ideal. Write why you love that particular scene and how it’s touched you, be as specific as you’d like to be and you could even elaborate on the actor or share some trivia about the movie in relation to that performance.
• I recommend using clips/photos/quotes as you see fit. I LOVE what Sati does with her weekly scene spotlight, but feel free to add your own spin to it
• To see more post on this blogathon you can go here.

For this blogathon, I will not share about my darling Cillian Murphy because he has been getting more lead role than ever…beside that, I am sure you all had gone tired of me including Cillian in every movie blogathon I joined in

At first, I was thinking of sharing Benedict Cumberbatch…but someone else will take over his place. I want to share a small role that made me became a fan of that particular actor. I like Benedict when he became Sherlock and he didn’t have small role back then

Let’s just stop with the introduction and move to the main topic

Here are the actors who had delivered big performance from their small role.

Paul Bettany as Silas (The DaVinci Code)

The Davinci Code was not a great book, enjoyable but not great. However, I love one of the characters in that book. Silas was a pure hearted man who was being misguided by an irresponsible man. He was angelic heart but act so devilish. The uniqueness of his character captured my heart. When I heard it was about to be made into movie, I never heard of Paul Bettany. I wondered can he be Silas?

And to my delight surprise, he was FLAWLESS!! He was brilliant…he was even more brilliant than my favorite actor who also played in that movie, Tom Hanks. He was so convincing and I felt like seeing the character walk out of the book and get inside the movie. I am a harsh person when judging a movie from a book…especially one I like or character I like. Paul had captured every part of Silas and delivered it perfectly. Simply said, HE WAS SILAS!! 

After seeing him as Silas, he made a fan out of me. I try to watch ALL Paul’s movies since then…he is one of my  7 actors I will watch no matter how crappy the movie and Silas has made it into my top5 best adapted characters.

Too bad the only scene I can find is this torturing scene:

and this last scene where he died. I think this second one is better as it shows the emotions on his face.

Hiroyuki Sanada as Ujio (Last Samurai)

I think we all know that Tom Cruise is not the one to be seen in The Last Samurai…I went to the cinema (and bought its VCD) simply because of the Kendo Master, Hiroyuki Sanada. For this second actor, I had to admit that I have liked him before seeing his small role in The Last Samurai.

In this movie, we got a chance to see his skill in dealing with sword as he is a real life black belt kendo master.  Sanada’s role was as Ujio. He was one of the most dedicated, loyal and fierce samurai under Katsumoto. At first, he despised Cruise’s character but then grew respect on him.

His present was truly felt because his character has strong aura. He was very charismatic, he shown huge amount of charisma that swallowed Cruise’s completely. You can clearly seen from his face how he started respecting Cruise’s character. You don’t need to understand Japanese to understand him as his body language showed it all.

I really think he deserved more role in Hollywood (we will see him again in 27 Ronin).

This is the only scene I can find in youtube. Actually, I want to share one with him talking but this one is okay, you can see his expression.

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Paul Bettany and Hiroyuki Sanada are my choice for this fun blogathon, What do you think of them? and I would love to know who you have chosen

Thank you for hosting this blogathon, Ruth

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