Someone take Salt Lake Tribune critic Sean Means aside and quietly explain that Ben Foster is an almost certain no-go for a Best Supporting Actor nomination for his psycho-wacko bad guy in 3:10 to Yuma. There are three reasons why, and if you can’t remember them just have Means read this item.
One, Foster has built his relatively young career out of playing nutters with glaring eyes and arterial neck veins pumping furious red plasma, so it’s not a big deal that he’s done it again in a gunslinger vein.
Two, Foster let his makeup person gunk his face with too much soot and ash for the final shootout scene — he should have said, “C’mon, man…you’re making me look like I’m an actor wearing grungeball makeup just to make the point that I’m the kind of gunslinger who bathes only once a month instead of…you know, a real gunfighter! It’s arch and distracting.”
And three, Javier Bardem‘s No Country for Old Men Anton Chigurh is way scarier and creepier than Foster’s bad guy, and I really can’t imagine people saying, “Well, Foster’s nutter wasn’t as good as Bardem ‘s but he does the boiling-rage, thyroid-condition thing pretty well so what the hell…let’s nominate him.”