Amy Irving vs. Joan Allen
Battle of the Harried, Hand-Wringing Wives

We can't really blame Steven Soderbergh for not casting Joan Allen in the role of Barbara Wakefield, Michael Douglas's harried and hang-wringing wife, in Traffic, though we're hoping he at least tried. After all, Allen has established herself as the maestro of such roles. She previewed her prowess in Searching for Bobby Fischer, then followed up with Nixon, The Crucible, and The Ice Storm, in which she nailed the Real-Life Historical Hand-Wringer, the Puritanical Hand-Wringer, and the '70s-Era Flirting-with-Adultery Hand Wringer, respectively. Like Michael Corleone at the end of The Godfather, Allen has swiftly and ruthlessly wiped out the competition and consolidated her claim as Hollywood's premier furrow-browed spouse.

We don't mean to belittle Ms. Allen's talent: as she proved in this year's The Contender, she possesses a formidable reservoir of acting range that has, as yet, barely been tapped by Hollywood. And we're guessing that Ms. Allen is hoping to move beyond her early, hand-wringing-wife roles, so she doesn't end up as the twenty-first-century Anne Archer.

It's just that, well, you know...she's so damned good at hand-wringing! She owns that role. She's made that role her bitch. She plays hand-wringing like Yo-Yo Ma plays cello. Other actresses should have to pay a royalty to her every time one of them wrings a hand. Certainly Amy Irving should be forking over.

Irving does a fine job as Barbara Wakefield in Traffic, but she so eerily resembles Joan Allen -- both physically and in her mannerisms -- that she comes across as having been grown in a lab for the sole purpose of stepping in and playing the hand-wringing wife roles that Allen's now turning down. Irving certainly looks much more like Joan Allen than she does, say, Amy Irving, circa Carrie, in which she played the apple-cheeked high schooler who almost kinda not quite stops John Travolta and that blonde shrew from being so mean to Sissy Spacek.

We understand that time passes, seasons change, and talented character actors have to grow, to move on, to spread their wings. We can make do with Amy Irving, for now. But whenever we see a wife wringing her hands, we'll always think of Allen, lurking in the shadows like a heavyweight champ who could easily come out of retirement and whup every contender in sight.

Advantage: Allen, now and forever.