From The Playlist’s review of last year’s “Corner Office”:
Because it’s so drab and one-note, “Corner Office” leaves the viewer with lots of time to contemplate the Hamm Conundrum. To wit: in Jon Hamm, we have an actor who seems genetically engineered for movie stardom, a chiseled slab of masculinity who wears a suit like he was born to it, and is a magnificent actor, plus possesses an admirable refusal to take himself too seriously. He seems born of another era, a time when icons like Mitchum and Wayne and Brando filled our screens, which is part of why he was so perfect for “Mad Men.” And perhaps that’s why he has yet to find a single feature film that suits his skills; as my friend, the film critic Sean Burns told me, he’s a man, and now they make movies about boys.
So perhaps that’s why, its many other virtues notwithstanding, it’s so depressing to see Hamm as the sputtering bureaucrat, a role that any one of a hundred other actors could’ve played, in “Top Gun: Maverick,” a movie about a (59-year-old) boy, and that’s certainly why it’s so depressing to see him succumbing to the temptation of actorly dowdiness in “Corner Office.”
Baby Driver
Great movie. But I think this movie shows both sides of the coin with Jon. Dialog heavy scenes where Jon gets a chance to be level headed and really deliver his lines with potency always work in his favor. Like the cafe scene with Baby and the female lead is outstanding from his part. But practically every scene of him just being the “villain” feel off to me. It might just be that my expectations of him onscreen are too high after Mad Men. I don’t blame Jon at all though, he clearly works incredibly hard in his career. I just feel like the roles he’s played have not given him much of a chance to shine. Like give the guy another leading role for christsakes.
It really does work when they lean into the dichotomy. The aesthetic towards uncanny, there has to be something lurking.