Everything you need to know about Bill Paxton’s role in ‘Mean Dreams’
Suspenseful drama is one of the late actor’s last performances
Hollywood continues to mourn the loss of actor Bill Paxton, who died unexpectedly three weeks ago from a stroke after heart surgery at age 61. The prolific star of Aliens and Titanic had juggled TV (CBS’ Training Day) with dark thrillers ( Night
crawler) in recent years, the latest being Mean Dreams (video on demand and in theaters Friday in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, Dallas, San Francisco, Houston, Seattle, Minneapolis and Denver).
Here’s what you need to know about one of Paxton’s final performances. PAXTON SHEDS HIS ‘NICE GUY’ PERSONA. We’re used to rooting for Paxton’s plucky heroes in ’90s thrillers such as Twister and Apollo 13, but the actor goes full mustachetwirling villain as Dreams’ Wayne Caraway. Paxton delivers a legitimately terrifying performance as the hard-drinking and corrupt cop, who frequently beat his wife before she died in a car accident and now takes out his aggression on his teenage daughter, Casey (Sophie Nélisse).
We see the full extent of his cruelty when he nearly drowns Casey’s new boyfriend, Jonas (Josh Wiggins), in a farmyard trough after he tries to step in when Wayne hits her. Later, Wayne fatally shoots a man during a drug deal and takes his suitcase full of money, which Jonas steals before running away with Casey. That sends Wayne into a rage spiral, culminating in a gloomy, bloody standoff with the lovestruck teens.
“I find that when you play the villain, usually they have a better justification than the protagonist — and they’re always more interesting because of that,” Paxton told People and Entertainment Weekly last May while promoting Dreams at Cannes Film Festival. “You want to play a character that’s indelible in the audience’s mind. It’s like, ‘Here comes tiger, what’s he going to do now?’ ” THE MOVIE IS FINE, BUT PAXTON IS GREAT. Dreams has been warmly, if not rapturously received by critics, earning 73% positive reviews on aggregate site Rotten Tomatoes. Variety criticized the film’s “lumpily inauthentic dialogue,” while The Hollywood Reporter was unimpressed by the “cliché, implausible plotting and cumbersome dialogue.” The script is certainly unsubtle, with Jonas at one point telling Wayne, “You wouldn’t know an angel if you beat on one.”
But there are still things to love in the taut thriller, namely Steve Cosens’ stark cinematography, Son Lux’s haunting score and Paxton’s towering performance. The actor “injects Mean Dreams with a palpable sense of menace,”
IndieWire hailed. “He’s a terrific embodiment of the harsh world holding the film’s central characters down at every turn.” IT’S NOT THE LAST TIME YOU’LL SEE PAXTON ONSCREEN. If Dreams was indeed Paxton’s final movie, it wouldn’t be a bad performance to go out on. Despite his scenery-chewing, he still manages to bring a glint of humanity to the nearly irredeemable Wayne, particularly in a tear-stained confrontation with Casey late in the film.
Luckily, there are still more Paxton projects on the horizon. He’ll appear in the less-enthusiastically received Training Day when it returns April 8 (9 p.m. ET/PT). (According to CBS, he shot all 13 episodes before his death and his role won’t be recast if there’s a second season). He also can be seen in next month’s big-screen adaptation of Dave Eggers’ 2013 novel The Circle starring Emma Watson and Tom Hanks (in theaters April 28, following its premiere at Tribeca Film Festival).