I saw Rob Reiner‘s LBJ in Toronto last year. I didn’t hate it, but it mostly feels like a dutiful, going-through-the-motions thing. Not bad, okay at times, an in-and-outer. But not as commanding as HBO’s All The Way, and Bryan Cranston performance as the 36th president has more juice and bombast than Woody Harrelson‘s. The best Johnson ever was Randy Quaid in LBJ: The Early Years (’87). You can tell right off the bat that Harrelson’s appearance and accent aren’t right. He doesn’t have that Texas hill country drawl, which had a Huckleberry Hound-like tonality. On top of which Woody sounds awfully similar to Carson Wells, the bounty hunter he played in No Country For Old Men. Plus there’s something inhuman about his features.
