Being a highly skilled thesp, Robert DeNiro has always been able to play mellow or solemn or soft-spoken. He’s performed in this vein more often than not.
But except for five low-key, major-value performances — his Vito Corleone in The Godfather, Part II, Jack Walsh in Midnight Run (full of inner conflict, regret about past mistakes), the inwardly chilly, mostly pragmatic Neil MacAuley in Heat, timid Chicago cop Wayne Dobie in Mad Dog and Glory, and that super-moderate, restrained, gentle-feeling performance that he gave in Nancy Meyers’ The Intern — DeNiro has generally failed to make truly vivid impressions unless he’s played characters with some kind of manic vibe or a violent impulse thing or, you know, a loose screw aspect.
The more “normal”, sensible and schlubby his characters were, the less effective DeNiro has been. The more “ruled by inner demons” they were, the better he was.
Those five perfs aside, DeNiro was born to play edgelords.
Think about it — Johnny Boy in Mean Streets (hyper nutter), Jake LaMotta in Raging Bull (animal), Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver (psycho with a messiah complex), Rupert Pupkin in The King of Comedy (delusional would-be comedian), Satan in Angel Heart, Al Capone in The Untouchables (fiendish, baseball-bat-wielding, Prohibition-era monster), Jimmy Conway in Goodfellas (Brooklyn mob sociopath), Max Cady in Cape Fear (evil psychopathic pervert), Louis Gara in Jackie Brown (stupid lowlife criminal), Jack Byrnes in Meet The Parents (obsessive psycho-dad), Pat Solitano in Silver Linings Playbook (obsessive Philadelphia Eagles gambling junkie), Frank Sheeran in The Irishman (contract killer).
These twelve performances are where the DeNiro gold is…twelve edgelords…twelve sociopaths or obsessives…twelve lit fuses.