Brendan Fraser’s performance in “Killers of the Flower Moon” has become one of the more divisive parts of the film.
In ‘Killers,’ Fraser plays William Hale’s attorney, W.S. Hamilton. He has seven minutes of screentime, and hams it up in every single one of those minutes. His thick Southern accent is distracting, ditto his facial expressions.
He just looks pissed off every time he’s onscreen. Even when he isn’t talking. As The Daily Beast wrote, he “makes a habit of suddenly shouting.” That, he does. Fraser’s performance can be best described as “jarring.”
Reactions to his performance on social media are all over the place — he was compared to the Kool-Aid Man, some are asking editor Thelma Schoonmaker to edit him out, while others are foolishly implying that his performance is so bad that he should give back his Oscar.
Martin Scorsese is not one of these haters. He’s defending Fraser’s work in ‘Killers’ claiming that Fraser’s performance was “perfect” (via LADbible):
We thought he’d be great for the lawyer and I admired his work over the years. He actually came in for I think a couple of weeks on the picture, particularly when it was in our later shoot. We had a really good time working together, particularly with Leo. Particularly in the scene where he says, ‘They’re putting a noose around your neck, he’s saving you dumb boy.' Really for us, when we heard that… he brought the whole scene down on Leo. It was perfect. And he had that girth. He’s big in the frame at that time. He’s a wonderful actor and he was just great to work with.
Fraser doesn’t enter “Flower Moon” until its last 20 minutes. His line-reading has polarized so many viewers that Apple Original Films actually ended up tweeting a passage from the book ‘Flower Moon’ is based on.
“Note the exclamation point,” Apple wrote, defending Fraser’s over-the-top performance.
