I have to say that I’m genuinely surprised by how many people are shocked to see a skinhead Taron Egerton terrorising Charlize Theron in Netflix’s Apex. Don’t get me wrong, he’s clearly the best part of the movie. But the baby-faced Welsh actor, best known for playing Eggsy in the Kingsman movies and Elton John in the award-winning Rocketman, seems an unlikely candidate for a demented villain, only if you haven’t seen his spectacular work in the similarly weird Apple TV thriller, Smoke.
Nobody seems to have watched Smoke, at least nobody of my general acquaintance, and that’s a terrible shame, given just how good it is. It doesn’t start well, granted, but once it finds its feet, it’s a great, unpredictable time. More to the point, it hinges pretty heavily on Taron Egerton being weird — way weirder than he is in Apex, even — to the extent that he eventually becomes terrifying, if a little pitiable. It’s impossible to talk more about it without some spoilers, and it’s best viewed entirely fresh, so if you haven’t seen it, just take this as a capsule summary of everything I’m about to say: If you liked Egerton’s wacky villain turn in Apex, you’ll love what he was doing in Smoke.
The New King of Weird Bad Guys
It’d be so easy for Taron Egerton to regularly slip into the handsome leading man role that I find myself a little relieved he has decided to swerve it quite often recently. And I say that as someone generally in favour of typecasting, at least in certain circumstances. If someone is really good at one thing, it’s often ill-advised for them to keep trying their hand at others. But I genuinely think the thing that Egerton is best at is playing really weird bad guys.
And he shouldn’t be! He’s too boyish to be menacing, too good-looking to be buyable as an outcast, too charming not to be likeable. Maybe that’s the secret. In his recent villain era, Egerton isn’t playing run-of-the-mill bad guys. He’s playing absolute lunatics that allow him to chew the scenery like some sort of demented beaver. He’s dancing to The Chemical Brothers for no reason at all. He’s marching to his own tune, playing characters that it’s increasingly beginning to seem like only he can play, or at the very least, only he can play in quite this way.
And that started in Smoke.
‘Smoke’ Is Truly Brilliant But Requires Some Patience
Created by Dennis Lehane and inspired by the podcast Firebug, about the crimes of serial arsonist John Leonard Orr, Smoke finds Egerton as Arson Investigator Dave Gudsen. He and a troubled detective (played by Jurnee Smollett) team up to hunt down two serial arsonists. Early on, though, it’s revealed that one of the arsonists is Dave himself, and that’s only the tip of a very strange iceberg.
Smoke is the perfect project for Egerton because it’s largely a character study, and what’s being studied is how unhinged Gudsen can become under the right circumstances. It employs a few unusual narrative gimmicks — including passages from a manuscript Dave is writing that several characters often read aloud — but largely rests on Egerton’s performance, which begins as a charismatic but fairly straightlaced professional and evolves into a portrait of delusion and mania that has to be seen to be believed.
The performance touches on basically everything that Egerton does well. He’s believable as a competent charmer who’s slightly full of himself, but equally convincing as an outright maniac. A later twist hinging on Egerton’s appearance is the icing on the cake of a major casting coup that allowed Egerton to announce himself as someone who could do bad guys really well.
If you enjoyed Apex, you should definitely check it out.
