And Kieran Culkin… sigh.
I just… A friend of mine pointedly asked who would be playing the part of Roma when I told her I was going to see this. When we both realized who it would be, both of our eyebrows raised (I imagine… It was over Facebook).
The general consensus is that Kieran Culkin tore it up through his run on Succession. It’s that kind of weirdo, nervous, try-hard aspect that I was super interested to see in the role of Roma, the hotshot salesman who is the de facto leader of the office.
(A quick aside: What an awesome decision to have him coincidentally miss the “ABC” speech from the movie. His absence serves two purposes: 1) He doesn’t really need to be there. This “Sell or you’re fired” speech simply doesn’t apply to him. And 2) Could you imagine if he WAS there? It would be a fucking train wreck. For multiple reasons. By far one of my favorite examples of “addition by subtraction” in acting.)
What I got was… I’m still not exactly sure what I got. It wasn’t AWFUL, per se. But five minutes into his intro “absolute morality” speech, I immediately thought to myself: “No. No, I’m really not liking his read on this character.” It felt like how that one actor that you know thinks you should play “sleazeball”. And there are SO many more layers to the character of Roma than just the sleazeball salesman. Pacino brought you into the world of Roma to where you weren’t sure exactly of whether he believed the shit he was saying or not or was it a pitch or was he just babbling?
Yes.