Article Provied By Nick Prigge
Of the 1997 film “Kicked in the Head” the late great Roger Ebert wrote it’s “one of those movies where you wish the story was about the supporting characters.” That in and of itself isn’t necessarily noteworthy. There are a lot of films you wish were about the supporting characters, as the quote implies. Why it’s of particular interest to us, however, is because of “Kicked in the Head’s” leading man – namely, Kevin Corrigan. If Ebert wanted the story to be solely about the supporting characters then that would imply they had more affability than Corrigan’s main character. But then, that’s the whole deal with Corrigan, his lack of affability. He’s the oddball, the unconventional duckling, less Johnny Cash than Luther Perkins with a Fender Esquire that doesn’t really work right.
I’ve said many times before that if I ran Hollywood then Kevin Corrigan would be Brad Pitt. It’s to suggest that in a Hollywood under my no doubt ludicrous command someone as eccentric as Mr. Corrigan could be both a heartthrob and a top-billed star. But then, as Ebert seemed to suggest, Corrigan wasn’t built to be a leading man. And really, neither was Brad Pitt. Oh, Brad Pitt was born to be a leading man; yes, of course, obviously. But despite his obligatory Movie Star Roles, he’s found a truer niche for himself as a wonky supporting guy, like the fitness wackadoo in “Burn After Reading” or the Stetson-wearing philosophizer in “The Counselor” or even all the way back to “12 Monkeys” where his mental case is just a red herring. He so often gets top billing and a prominent place on the poster, yet he functions more effectively on the periphery, even in something like as gargantuan as the “Ocean’s” movies, letting Clooney sit in the throne while consuming meatball sandwiches off to the side.
Kevin Corrigan is all off to the side. That’s why he could never be the Leo part in “The Departed”; he could only ever be “the jerk off fucking cousin.” In “The Slums of Beverly Hills” he’s his own idiosyncratic version of The Boy Next Door, the slacker John Truett to Natasha Lyonne’s Esther Smith. That’s why there was something so grandly poetic in “Scotland, PA”, the modern day re-telling of Macbeth, in which he was tasked with playing modernized Banquo. “Whatever your highness commands me to do, it is always my duty to do it.” He takes instructions from the leading man and then takes the shiv.
All this is why the recently released “Results” suggests something of a Corrigan-ish coronation, like it’s the role to which the litany of IMDb stepping stones has been building. He is, in essence, finally a leading man. That’s the tack taken by Mark Olsen in his piece for the L.A. Times, writing “Kevin Corrigan gets ‘Results’ with a winning lead rom-com role.” And, yes, in some ways, he is the leading man. His character, Danny, incites the action. Wheezy and red-faced, he enters a gym on something of a whim in order to get in shape. He develops eyes for his comely personal trainer (Cobie Smulders). But the personal trainer might actually like her boss (Guy Pearce). And while it comes on like a rom-com, angled like a love triangle, it resists that neat packaging, much like Danny ultimately resists the ethos of exercise. “You and I have different ideas of what constitutes healthy,” he says.
That line might also aptly summarize Corrigan’s own viewpoint of what constitutes a leading man. After all, “Results”, as Olsen writes, “reveals itself to be a rom-com almost like a magic trick, handing off its focus from Corrigan’s Danny to Pearce’s Trevor somewhere along the way.” In other words, a piece centered around Corrigan finally earning and running with a leading role admits that eventually that leading role cedes center stage to the real leading role – the leading role played by Guy Pearce at his physical peak, chiseled and aerobicized to perfection. Corrigan just kinda stays sorta flabby.
And at film’s end, Pearce gets a dance with Smulders while Corrigan dances by himself off to the side.
Check out more of Nick Prigge’s Writing At His Website: http://cinemaromantico.blogspot.com/
