What has become of Russell Crowe? When the Australian-Kiwi actor, 60, signed on to star in Kraven the Hunter, he might have thought he was onto a winner: a blockbuster Spider-Man spinoff, in which he plays the father of the man many think will be the next James Bond (Aaron Taylor-Johnson). Critics duly hunted Kraven down, and Crowe’s performance along with it – shooting it, skinning it, and turning it into a winter coat. The Independent’s Clarisse Loughrey described Crowe’s attempts at a Russian accent as “Boris-and-Natasha from Rocky and Bullwinkle-level”; IndieWire’s David Ehrlich wrote that Crowe “yammers about weakness, fear, and breaking his enemies with enough borscht in his voice to make Ivan Drago seem like a respectful depiction of the average Soviet by comparison”.
Sadly, this has become all too common for Crowe, an actor who was once electric. When he broke through in the Nineties – as a bruiser with a badge in LA Confidential, or the set-upon whistleblower in Michael Mann’s The Insider – he was one of the biggest stars in Hollywood, a versatile and specific character actor full of gruff gravitas and blunt, no-nonsense machismo. With 2000’s Gladiator, he announced himself as a bona fide star; the Oscar win was inevitable. (It’s a performance which seems better than ever, in the light of Paul Mescal’s pallid imitation in Gladiator II.) His hot streak continued – the showy, awards-lavished A Beautiful Mind; the brilliant and enduring Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World – up until around 2007, and the superlative remake of the western classic 3:10 to Yuma. Since then, though, it’s been a cavalcade of dross.
