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Yes, I know: we should just be patient. Russell Crowe's time will come. After all, wasn't it clear that, among the many fine actors in L.A. Confidential, he was the only one with both chops and charisma enough to burn a hole through sheet metal? We weren't the only ones to figure that out, right? You'd think so, and yet -- the best anyone could figure to do with him since is stick him in the Mighty Ducks go to Anchorage, otherwise known as Mystery, Alaska. Now he's co-starring in The Insider -- an "important" film in which he's no doubt very good, but in which he looks alarmingly like a late-period J.T. Walsh. Is this any way to nurture a sex symbol? Meanwhile, People magazine is stuck recycling Richard Gere as the Sexiest Man Alive?
The kind of glammed-down role Crowe has in The Insider seems more like the kind of part you take when your toboggan is whistling down the other side of Fame Mountain -- like Burt Reynolds's part in Boogie Nights. You know, pack on a few pounds, boost the cred, get back on the map. But Russell Crowe has been standing patiently on the doorstep of fame since The Quick and the Dead, and yet no one wants to invite him in.
Come on in, Russell. Get out of the cold. Be a leading man. We're not saying you should do a romantic comedy with Kim Cattrall or anything; we're just worried that the window is closing, and we may lose you like we lost Ray Liotta. Remember how Ray was poised right after Goodfellas? Then came Corinna, Corinna and Operation Dumbo Drop, then Turbulence, and then Muppets in Space.
We don't have any fancy connections. But if someone can talk to someone and make Russell Crowe a big star before this time next year, we'd owe that person a big favour.
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