Michael Rapaport vs. Dash Mihok
Battle of the Dim But Generally Well-Meaning Redheaded Brooklynites

WARNING: Contains The Day After Tomorrow spoilers!

Pity those millions of natives of Brooklyn. PITY THEM. Because they happened to enter the world by way of that fine borough -- due not to their own choice, but by an accident of birth -- and grew up with a distinctive and charming accent that, whenever it's heard on TV or in the movies, is coming out of the mouth of someone we're meant to think is a low-class mouth-breather. Two such mouths belong to our subjects today: Dash Mihok and Michael Rapaport.

Fortunately for Rapaport and Mihok, there is no shortage of roles for big, dumb, Brooklyn-accented redheads; despite their youth (Rapaport is thirty-four, and Mihok barely thirty), both have worked steadily throughout the '90s and into the '00s, each landing a succession of tiny roles in huge productions. For Rapaport, that means filling out the backgrounds in movies like Men of Honor (because, seriously, if you're not either the determined, legless black sailor or Robert De Niro, no one remembers your ass was even in that movie; in fact, no one remembers that movie at all); Deep Blue Sea (see above, except replace all that stuff about De Niro and the legless sailor with "smart sharks"); and The 6th Day (in a film that had room for not one but two Schwarzeneggers, who remembers the carrot-topped motormouth sidekick?).

Mihok has served much the same purpose in movies like Basic (as some kind of army grunt opposite a scenery-bingeing John Travolta -- well, probably; we never saw it, but that boy's got a head made for a crew cut) and The Perfect Storm (heroically attempting a nearly impossible water rescue in the Clooney- and Wahlberg-free storyline nobody cares about). In the current The Day After Tomorrow, Mihok plays Jason, a paleoclimatologist working in the research team headed by Dennis Quaid's Jack. Jason, presumably, has at least one post-secondary degree, or he wouldn't be part of a research expedition to Antarctica, and yet, what do you know? Poor old Jason's always fucking shit up. When we first meet him, Jason's been entrusted with the big-ass drill and charged to collect a core sample of the gigantic iceberg they're on. But when Jason sets to drilling, he splits the damn thing in half! An argument could certainly be made that global climate change had more to do with hollowing out the iceberg than Jason did, but those were Jason's mitts on the machinery when everything went to hell, so we'll never know. Jason further ruins everything for everyone by being the middle guy in the hiking convoy when Frank (a typically delightful Jay O. Sanders) crashes through the glass roof of a shopping mall, and Jason fails to pull him up in time; Frank falls like a mile to his death (and splats onto the food-court floor -- oh, the indignity), and stupid old Jason lives, only to collapse from exhaustion a few days later, forcing the much leaner Jack to drag his beefy carcass along until he can climb down into a Wendy's and start fires in all the stoves that have, mysteriously, not had their fuel lines frozen.

Anyway: if you're looking for kind of a dopey lummox to back up your much more bankable leading man or CGI shark, Mihok and Rapaport are but a phone call away.

When budgets are in the seven-figure (or under) range and there's less at stake, Mihok and Rapaport get to play bigger parts. Rapaport, particularly, benefited from the indie-movie boom of the mid-'90s, with leading roles in Zebrahead, Beautiful Girls, Cop Land, and Bamboozled; he also appeared in not one but two Woody Allen films: the Oscar-nominated Mighty Aphrodite, and the Oscar-un-nominated Small Time Crooks. None of these is a movie we'd care to see at all (Crooks) or again (everything else. Actually, to be fair, we heard Zebrahead was okay). But they all got made, and Rapaport was all over them. Were the movies bad because of Michael Rapaport, or despite him? Well, based on his subsequent work on the crown turd in David E. Kelley's televisiual toilet bowl (known to some as Boston Public), we'd say Rapaport's special gift as a performer is to take a so-so project and make it shittier. Remember to keep him out of your film, or he'll begin to make it lousy lousy lousy lousy lousy LOUSY YAAAAAAAAOW!

Furthermore: not long ago, Rapaport faced off against another pretender to his slot, Ric Rossovich, primarily because Rossovich is Rapaport's brunet twin. That time, Rapaport came out on top; this time, confronting a contender who has a lot more in common with him than facial features, Rapaport is...in trouble.

Because we have much warmer feelings for Dash Mihok -- and not for any especially good reason, either. We vaguely recalled him being in Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet, not that we could remember who he was. We didn't even remember he was in Sleepers or Foxfire, probably because the beauty of Billy Crudup (in the former) and Angelina Jolie (in the latter) scorched Mihok's image right off the film. So, apparently, all the love we have fo Mihok is based on Felicity. Mihok appeared in the first season as Lynn, Ben's swim-team friend. Though Lynn seemed, at first, to be a standard-issue TV dope -- the accent, y'all! -- he soon revealed that his affably fratty persona belied hidden depths. "I know who Ayn Rand is. I know about the Bell Curve. I have friends in France." Lynn never returned for later seasons of the show, which may be why we never came to hate him as we did so many other characters who were ruined over the show's long life (NOEL); instead, he lasted just long enough to find a permanent place in our hearts.

Advantage: Mihok, the one who doesn't go around starring exclusively in bad movies and harassing Lili Taylor.