Mr. Nobody From Nowhere Is Making Love To Your Wife

Sexy, kinda...

Today's character:  Tom Buchanan

Luhrmann's Buchanan: Joel Edgerton

Past Toms:  Barry Sullivan, Bruce Dern, Martin Donovan

Okay, so begins my xenophobic, flag waving rant on Australian characters playing pure bred, corn fed Amerrrrricans.  It’s...not...that....big of....a deal (*shudders).  But really, my biggest issue with Edgerton as Tom is that I believe Bradley Cooper would have been a damn good Tom.  Dammit!  But, if Luhrmann feels better directing actors that he knows more about, then so be it.

Tom, described by some American actor as “the best character in the book. He’s so complicated...He’s xenophobic, he’s an alcoholic, but he also understands some profound stuff about class.”  Tom is an every-man.  He’s a young, rich Archie Bunker.  He’s everyone’s racist, beer drinkin' grandfather or father.  He says what he thinks no matter how anyone feels, and he gets what he wants by either being an asshole or a passive-aggressive douche.  He drinks, he cheats on his wife, but he also knows that all of it is fun and games.  And he never really learns anything.

That unnamed American actor also provides a warning to those playing Tom; “Whoever plays it has to take a gentle hand, because it could so easily be stock, where he’s a rich jerk you don’t identify with at all.”  So very very true.  Let’s loooook at how Edgerton stacks up.

Pros:  Looks the part, replaced Ben Affleck, Luhrmann states, "In casting Tom one had to find an actor who could credibly be (as Fitzgerald describes him) 'one of the most powerful ends that ever played football at New Haven,' had five-star acting chops and in the big dramatic showdown scenes between Gatsby and Tom, hold the screen against Leonardo DiCaprio, in the appropriate age group."

Cons:  Seems soft spoken in other roles (Gawain in King Arthur), kind of looks like Conan O’Brien just a little bit...if you squint, can play supporting role but can he dominate the role (see below, or Luhrmann's statement above), has four other films coming out in 2011—how much heart will he put into the role or will he be in full acting form?

Separated at birth...

As stated above, Bruce Dern came off as the rich jerk few people could identify with.  The main knock on him is that he does not look like a football player.  He looks like a regular rich douche who got everything with Daddy’s money.  Not, well, a Yale football player, who got everything with Daddy’s money.  Otherwise, Dern did a pretty decent job controlling his wife and making us all hate him.  Donovan plays a pretty decent Tom; I can believe he was a football player in the ‘20s.  It seems he is a little bit dry and low-key for a hulking douche socialite, but overall did not do anything to ruin the role.  But, maybe that’s the problem; none of the past Tom’s really capture everything about the character.  He’s an every-man as much as he’s an uppity prick, but by the end of the story you know he is an uppity prick, so it is not really all that surprising when he sells everyone down the river.  I want Edgerton to break out of the mold of bland backgroundy Toms and dominate the character, I really do.  Tom should keep popping up in the film doing his ‘I’m here to be a dick’ routine, and the viewer should say, “Get off the screen, asshole.”  The first time I read the book I just wanted him to shut up and not ruin things.  But, maybe this character is prone to a better description in a book as opposed to cinema.