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How many movies was Mark Ruffalo in before he starred in 2000's You Can Count On Me? (No cheating by peeking up at the 'Experience' column at the top of this page, which you probably already read anyway, but bear with us.) What's your gut guess? Two? Three? Six?
Considering the way in which Ruffalo, with You Can Count on Me, suddenly put a chokehold on film lovers' attention, you'd think he'd never been in a movie at all. Perhaps he'd been toiling as a maintenance man on Universal soundstage, before some hawk-eyed director spotted him and said, "You there, with the mop -- ever thought of acting?"
In You Can Count on Me, the film most people know him from, Ruffalo was a revelation. He had a rough-hewn sensitivity and a seductive, awkward charm. Apparently, in his new film, In the Cut, he's traded in the wounded machismo for a porn-star moustache and a much more menacing demeanour. We're not sure about that, but we do know that his presence alone is enough to make In the Cut the first Meg Ryan vehicle we've wanted to see since D.O.A. with Dennis Quaid.
But there's something troubling about Mr. Ruffalo. (It's certainly not his name, which is very pleasant to say, especially when preceded by "Mister.") His breakout role (we hoped we could make it to the end of a piece about him without using the grating cliche "breakout role," but alas) in Count On Me -- as a moody and maturity-challenged loner -- reminded us of a similar breakout role by a similar suddenly-intriguing talent: Jason Patric in After Dark, My Sweet, way back in 1990.
Patric was brilliant as the conflicted and femme-fatale-stricken "Kid" Collins. With his good looks and high-wattage intensity, Patric even earned comparisons to the young Brando -- just as Ruffalo would a decade later.
Unfortunately, Patric's follow-up to After Dark, My Sweet was Frankenstein Unbound. Then he had an unfortunate coming-out party to the movie fans of America when he took the lead in the ill-advised sequel Speed II: Rock the Boat!. Now he's probably best remembered as the answer to the trivia question, "Whom did Julia Roberts run off with when she left Kiefer Sutherland at the altar?"
Patric has, of late, started to rebuild his career with sporadic but noteworthy roles in films such as Your Friends & Neighbors and the recent Narc. Slowly, he's been able to convince the moviegoing public that he is not, in fact, Billy Zane.
With any luck, Ruffalo won't fall into the same hole. He wisely sidestepped the first pitfall by not cashing in on his post-Count on Me buzz by jumping into a buddy film with, say, Josh Hartnett. And while the reviews for In the Cut have been...well, cutting (a post on IMDb calls it "Quite fascinatingly awful!"; The New Yorker's David Denby raves, "terrible!"), Ruffalo has earned the universally kind notices for the film.
Still, he deserves much better than to play saviour to Meg Ryan vanity projects gone awry. Of all the recent flavours of the month (Hartnett, Jake Gyllenhaal, et al.) he's definitely the one with the best chops and the sweetest aftertaste.
Yum! Ruffalicious!
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