Make the Case: 5 Essential Nick Nolte Films

Remember that HBO series Luck? If you don’t, it’s okay. It ran for one season, featured an amazing cast, and was cancelled due to some controversy involving the horses used in the series. If you can get your hands on the show, I recommend it highly for a number of reasons. Nick Nolte’s scene-stealing performance as a trainer is one of those reasons.

It highlights an actor who has largely disappeared from the mainstream film landscape over the past decade or so, owing to various factors. Bourbon and insanity are perhaps the two biggest reasons why Nick Nolte has not assumed a place as an actor similar to the positions of people like Robert De Niro or Meryl Streep. He is every bit as good as those legends. It just seems like ages since a large enough audience saw that brilliance for themselves, with the possible exception of his performance in the movie Warrior.

To look at Nolte now, it’s understandable to wonder how this guy was once considered to be something of a heartthrob. The years have not been kind. His eyes are permanently glued into “Crazy Carnival Barker” mode. He tends to sport a heavy beard. His trademark gravel voice is now a collection of broken glass and sharp pebbles that could fill up the Grand Canyon. He has worked steadily throughout the 2010s, but very little has caught the attention of a mainstream audience. That’s fine. Barring Warrior and Luck, there hasn’t been much he’s done over the past few years that has been worth getting excited about.

Yet in those two things, Nolte makes it clear that he is still a captivating actor. At age 74, he still has the ability to play complex, pitiable, raging characters. Many of his best performances reveal the inner workings of people who are trying to work against such obstacles as crumbling psyches, dissipating familial relationships, and the chaotic spiritual weather of the current times. He has played other characters, including classic tough guy cops and straightforward leading men, but those broken figures who have to continue with the business of living seem to be the ones who interest him the most.

Nolte has a series from EPIX coming out, in which he plays a former President. I have no idea how that show is going to come across, but I’m hoping it’s good. Although very likely in the twilight of his career, there is presumably still time for Nolte to give us at least one more extraordinary performance. I don’t think Warrior was the last one. Actors as good as Nolte can surprise you with their gifts at the drop of a hat. It’s just a question of when.

 

1. 48 Hours (1982)

48 Hours is still pretty freaking entertaining. There are a couple of reasons for this. It is one of the all-time best Eddie Murphy performances of all time (it was also his film debut, which makes this all the more amazing). When people wax nostalgic about Murphy’s one-time brilliance, this is one of the movies they bring up. However, 48 Hours is also the granddaddy of the buddy cop comedy. On that front, it is still enormously enjoyable. It is also on that front that you can’t give Murphy all of the credit. Nolte makes up the straight man portion of the comedy team here, and it is quite frankly hard to imagine 48 Hours being as good as it is without him. Murphy is brilliant, and is deservedly remembered as the breakout star of the film. However, many of his best scenes in the movie come as a result of his chemistry with Nick Nolte. You couldn’t just put anyone in that role. Nolte’s perpetually grouchy, fiercely determined police detective is not just a good match for Murphy’s street smart con artist. It’s also a good performance from Nolte that allows Murphy to have someone decent to play off of.

 

2. Down and Out in Beverly Hills (1986)

Down and Out in Beverly Hills is a strange, fairly brilliant satire of its decade. It also features a hilarious, grungy performance from Nolte, as a homeless man of seemingly endless wisdom, who works his way into the lives of an upper-class Beverly Hills family (headed by Richard Dreyfuss and Bette Midler). Nolte’s good-natured bum is charming throughout, providing what may well be the only element in the film that is not hyperactively cartoonish or distorted. It’s one of the lighter roles Nolte took during his peak years, and it’s one of the most fun by far. The dynamic established early on with Dreyfuss’ and Midler’s characters gives the film a foundation that allows the stranger elements to actually make sense. Part of me has always wanted a sequel to this, if only to see what these people are up to now.

 

3. Mother Night (1996)

Keeping in mind that I didn’t like the film version of Slaughterhouse-Five, this might be the only good adaptation of Kurt Vonnegut’s work that we are ever going to get. There is something about Vonnegut’s style and humor that have made film adaptations difficult to pull off. Yet Mother Night is pretty close to perfect, both as a standalone film, and as a cinematic depiction of one of Vonnegut’s most cynical and unhappy novels. Nick Nolte is a significant element to why Mother Night is so beautiful in conveying dread, regret, and horror.

Nolte has a slight reputation for being someone you can rely on for a good off-the-rails performance when needed, and sometimes, when it’s not needed. In playing an American double agent who works for the Nazis as a radio personality, there is naturally a temptation to overact to a great degree. That never happens here. Combined with the even, empathetic direction of journeyman Keith Gordon, Mother Night features one of Nolte’s best, most complex performances. Even as the plot becomes slightly convoluted, he remains a believable, fiercely sad figure, fighting desperately to stay alive after the war. Nolte’s Howard Campbell has some valuable lessons to learn about humanity, as well as lessons about himself. By the end of Mother Night, he has learned these lessons. He just happens to pay a heartbreakingly steep price for them. All of that amounts to a tremendous challenge for any actor. Nolte meets the challenge, and gives a performance that is far more memorable than the film itself.

 

4. Affliction (1997)

Just one year later, Nolte garnered considerable attention during awards season for Affliction. This film has at least a little in common with Mother Night, in terms of dealing with a story of a man haunted by personal ghosts and unfathomable regret. Affliction is considerably more satisfying as an overall film, and is considerably more complex and harrowing. Nolte plays a man who may or may not be beyond the state of quietly and gently unraveling. We find out as the film moves in and out of a detective/conspiracy story that Nolte’s bloated, weary sheriff endeavors to solve. We also learn a great deal about his character in scenes in which he interacts with his demonic, abusive, alcoholic father (the riveting, terrifying James Coburn). At its core, Affliction is a dismal, bleak story of family. It is an unforgettable suggestion that we never escape from our pasts. Nolte is staggering in playing a character who tries at the last possible second to do this. We know he’s going to fail, but we are absolutely devastated by the movie’s conclusion nonetheless.

 

5. The Good Thief (2002)

Deciding between this film and Warrior was a serious challenge, I promise you. Warrior is well worth watching for a number of reasons, with Nolte’s Oscar-nominated performance as an ailing drunk who wants to make peace with his sons being near the top of the list. However, at the end of the day, it might perhaps be best to close out the list with one of the most fun, likable characters Nolte has ever played. Neil Jordan’s loose remake of Bob Le Flambeur is an endlessly appealing heist film.

However, much of that appeal hinges on Nolte, who is by far the most important element to the film. It would seem as though Nolte was born to play a down-on-his-luck gambler/junkie, coming out of self-imposed retirement to pull off one last spectacular steal. The weariness inherent in Nolte comes through, but there is also warmth, wisdom, humor, and integrity in his portrayal of Bob Montagnet. Jordan creates the sophisticated, old-world cool of Nice and Monaco, France with ease. Nolte in turn creates the kind of veteran of that old-world cool that we would ideally like to be paired up with, if we ever found ourselves dealing with dire circumstances.

Over the past couple of decades, Nolte has settled into playing crazed, lonely old men. The Good Thief is arguably the last time he got to do something a little different from that. It’s a shame that there aren’t more roles like this one in his canon. Whether he’s trading familiar one-liners with an old police detective friend (the wonderful Tchéky Karyo), or flirting harmlessly with Nutsa Kukhianidze’s young prostitute character, Nolte is quite frankly sublime.