I really feel sorry for Toby Jones. Heck, after seeing Frank Langella (Frost/Nixon) and Richard Jenkins (The Visitor) get their 15 minutes in the spotlight this Oscar season, I feel doubly bad for Toby Jones. Like Langella and Jenkins, Jones has an extensive filmography but almost all his previous roles are small character roles. In fact, Jones has a small part in Frost/Nixon. He also played Karl Rove in Oliver Stone's W.
Well, 2006 should have been Jones' year to shine in the spotlight. Jones' portrayal of Truman Capote was not only spot on but he was able to generate a great amount of sympathy in a character whose personality is anything but sympathetic. Yes, this should have been the film to launch Jones into that upper tier of film actors but it didn't. What happened? Well, 2005 happened. More specifically, in 2005 Philip Seymour Hoffman played Truman Capote in what was essentialy the same film. For whatever dumb reason, two studios chose to greenlight biopics of Capote and, even more specifically, biopics that focused on the time in his life in which Capote was working on In Cold Blood.
Everything about Jone's version was far superior to Hoffman's. Don't get me wrong, I really like Hoffman quite a bit (his little role as the villain in Mission Impossible 3 was fantastic) but in watching him play Capote, you never forgot that it was Hoffman playing Capote. Jones, on the other hand, not only channels Capote to a frightening degree of verisimilitude but goes one step further by exposing a part of Capote's personality far removed from the grandiose public persona by which most people knew him.
Even the supporting cast is better in Infamous. While Katherine Keneer may be considered the more serious and talented actress, Sandra Bullock was remarkably impressive in the same role of Harper Lee (the author of To Kill a Mockingbird).
Knowing how much Infamous was overshadowed by Capote, I'm reminded of Larry Doby. What you've never heard of Larry Doby? Well, that's probably because he was the second black player to play in the Major Leagues. In many ways, what Doby had to go through was far more impressive than what Robinson experienced but no one ever thinks about what comes second.
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