Quentin Tarantino, while undeniably a master of his craft with works such as Kill Bill, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Inglourious Basterds, Django Unchained, Pulp Fiction, The Hateful Eight, and The Adventures of Cliff Booth spin-off, is notorious for having highly controversial takes. His latest? He called the grossly underrated, Emmy, Golden Globe, and BAFTA-nominated actor Paul Dano “weak sauce” during a podcast interview with the author of American Psycho, Bret Easton Ellis.
Tarantino viciously demeaned Dano as “the weakest male actor in SAG” based on his performance in Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood, one of the most iconic pieces of cinema ever created. While Tarantino still places There Will Be Blood in his top 20 films of the 21st century, he’s clearly no fan of Dano’s. Well, Tarantino is absolutely alone in thinking that, even Daniel Day-Lewis himself disagrees. The following movies (including TWBB) prove why Paul Dano is actually one of the best male actors in SAG.
10. Looper
Looper is a unique time travel narrative ideated by filmmaker Rian Johnson (Knives Out, The Last Jedi, Poker Face) that’s coded with undertones of Blade Runner. It envisions a future where time travel is exploited by the mob, who send their targets back into the past for assassins dubbed ‘loopers’ to execute and dispose of them without a trace. Paul Dano is a key player in this world, despite his screentime in Looper being relatively short.
Dano stars as a special telekinetic looper named Seth, who is a close acquaintance of Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s Joe, a fellow looper. With the little we get of Seth only in the beginning stages of the film, Dano still leaves such a lasting impact, where his presence becomes deeply missed throughout the rest of the movie. Seth violating the golden rule of his profession by allowing his future self to escape, thereby failing to close his own loop and resulting in his death, sets the serious tone for what would follow next for Joe.
9. Okja
If you enjoyed the French 75 in One Battle After Another or Project Mayhem in Fight Club, Paul Dano leads the equally anarchic Animal Liberation Front (ALF) in Bong Joon Ho’s Okja. The ALF are a non-lethal animal rights activist group who aim to free every animal from captivity and shut down the operations of the main antagonist organization known as the Mirando Corporation, having names and outfits that playfully (and now ironically) nod to Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs. Dano’s character, Jay, is one of the most empathetic toward animals and strikes a bond with the main protagonist, Mija, in helping her reunite with her childhood super pig, Okja.
Even as a side character, Dano’s role becomes one of the pivotal parts of the story, with a super fun post-credits scene continuation, too. Okja is a movie for animal lovers and an extraordinary piece of cinema for its dystopian commentary on meat production challenges and animal cruelty, with greater metaphorical meaning behind it. There are some riveting set pieces throughout, and the design of the super pigs is a showcase of some of the best and most impressive CGI ever. Jake Gyllenhaal and Tilda Swinton’s villains are a pure joy to see come to life here as well.
8. 12 Years A Slave
In Steve McQueen’s Best Picture-winning 12 Years a Slave, Paul Dano gives one of his many tour de force villain performances playing the vile John Tibeats. This is a character who grossly mistreats and abuses the slaves under him, including one scene where Tibeats sings a super degrading and awful song where you just want to slap him through the TV screen, so he finally shuts it (kind of like Joffrey in Game of Thrones). That’s ultimately the telltale sign of some exceptional acting.
12 Years a Slave is based on the gripping autobiographical story of Solomon Northup, a free man who was abducted and sold into slavery. This important story is stacked with an incredible ensemble cast that includes Lupita Nyong’o (who won the Oscar), Chiwetel Ejiofor, Michael Fassbender, Benedict Cumberbatch, Michael Kenneth Williams, Paul Giamatti, Sarah Paulson, and even Brad Pitt, but Paul Dano still offers such a memorable antagonist in Tibeats that he instantly stands out.
7. The Fabelmans
Legendary director Steven Spielberg made a movie in 2022 that depicts a metafictional narrative about himself coming of age and falling in love with filmmaking, and he chose none other than Paul Dano to play the fictional version of his father, Burt Fabelman. It’s the most layered performance you’ll see from Paul Dano yet. A sort of emotionally repressed ‘sad dad’ character, Burt is sceptical of his son Sammy’s aspirations to become a filmmaker, convinced it’s more of a hobby than a career. His character speaks to a lot of parents who have a hard time accepting their children’s possible career paths.
For any aspiring filmmakers or simply fans of Steven Spielberg who want some insight into his life, The Fabelmans is a must-see. What also makes this film all the more special (aside from the main cast and the score by John Williams) is that you have a cameo at the very end from the late filmmaker David Lynch (Twin Peaks, Lost Highway, Blue Velvet) as director John Ford, who lectures Sammy Fabelman about setting up a shot with the horizon line, making it his final on-screen appearance.
6. Love & Mercy
You may have heard of Taron Egerton as Elton John in Rocketman, Rami Malek as Freddie Mercury in the Oscar-winning Bohemian Rhapsody, or Timothée Chalamet in A Complete Unknown, but Paul Dano also joins this stellar lineup of actors starring in musical biopics with 2014’s Love & Mercy. Here, he plays the younger version of Beach Boys member Brian Wilson in one of his most wholesome and emotionally resonant roles, alongside John Cusack, who is the older version of the singer.
The film Love & Mercy extends beyond just your usual musician biopic in how it deals with the issue of mental health. Brian Wilson suffers from panic attacks and hallucinations brought on by schizoaffective disorder, and the movie documents his severe struggle with the illness throughout his life and career. Dano delivers a purely heartbreaking performance, especially the scene where he first experiences the hallucinations in the recording booth, which also saw him nominated for a Golden Globe. Plus, he proved he has a great singing voice covering Brian Wilson’s songs.
5. There Will Be Blood
Daniel Day-Lewis and Paul Dano’s characters in There Will Be Blood were both manipulative and unlikeable in their own idiosyncratic ways, and that was the intent. Dano’s Eli and Paul Sunday (a dual twin performance) is far from “weak sauce,” because it worked incredibly well against Day-Lewis’ Daniel Plainview as a foil, particularly the former brother. There were at least four significant scenes that showed why Dano is an actor you should take seriously.
The baptism scene is perhaps the most noteworthy, where Eli gets Daniel on his knees before the whole congregation to absolve his sins and admit that he abandoned his child, and then the ending, when Plainview completely loses it on Eli. The scene where Eli is dragged and beaten in the mud by Daniel, and finally, the sermon where Eli passionately and dramatically casts out the ‘demon’ of arthritis, are such standouts. There Will Be Blood may feel too long in parts and meanders a bit, but Dano and Day-Lewis’ performances make it all worth it, not to mention the score by Jonny Greenwood that will reverberate endlessly in your head.
4. Little Miss Sunshine
This is the Paul Dano performance that solidified him as a serious star. Little Miss Sunshine is a bundle of dysfunctional family comedy sunshine. Dano plays the introverted brother, Dwayne, who hates his family, loses himself in the writings of Nietzsche, and has taken a vow of silence to work toward his goal of becoming a military fighter pilot. Dwayne is on a road trip with his suicidal uncle, heroin addict grandfather (one of the funniest and tragic Alan Arkin performances), his overbearing parents, and his little sister, Olive, as they try to get her to her Little Miss Sunshine pageant.
Even with no lines of dialogue in the early parts of the film, Paul Dano steals every scene with his subtle choices in facial expressions and the movements and emotion with which he writes his sentences out on a notepad (including an underline of “Everyone” heard around the world). Dwayne ultimately becomes such a memorable and relatable Paul Dano performance. And when you get to his mental breakdown scene after a tragic reveal to his character, it fully demonstrates why he’s one of the greats.
3. Swiss Army Man
Swiss Army Man easily lands in the top three of Paul Dano’s performances. If you had a blast with the heartfelt and absurd ride of Everything Everywhere All at Once from the Daniels, expect more of that here and more. Dano plays Hank Thompson, who, at the beginning of the film, attempts suicide while stranded on a faraway island until he encounters Daniel Radcliffe’s corpse washed up along the beach, seemingly coming to life via flatulence.
Radcliffe’s Manny is discovered to be a miraculous undead Swiss Army Man, quickly using his farts to propel them across the water in one of the most brilliant opening credit sequences you’ll see, and then a certain body part below his waist becomes their compass home in a hilariously creative and genius twist. Dano’s portrayal of Hank shifts to more of a paternal figure to Radcliffe’s Manny, teaching him about the world and also discussing love. It’s almost like Cast Away, but if Wilson were a farting zombie with multiple bodily functions.
2. The Batman (2022)
Heath Ledger as Joker, Colin Farrell as Penguin, and Paul Dano as Riddler form the complete trifecta of Oscar-worthy Batman villain performances. To say that Dano was menacing as Edward Nashton, with his Zodiac Killer-inspired fit and full-on psychopath methods of terror (even flooding all of Gotham City), is an understatement. Dano’s take is the most chilling version of Riddler we’ve seen and goes toe-to-toe with Robert Pattinson’s Batman as the best character in the movie.
While Nolan’s The Dark Knight is the better action blockbuster film of a Batman adaptation, Matt Reeves’ The Batman feels more true to the noir-detective feel of the comics, especially coupled with the performances, ambient lighting, and visually striking shot compositions by the Oscar-winning cinematographer of Dune, Greig Fraser. It’s also scary enough that it makes a compelling Halloween watch, not to mention the intro being set against the backdrop of spooky season.
1. Prisoners
Perhaps the greatest mystery behind the masterpiece that is Prisoners is how this film only got nominated for one Oscar – its cinematography by the legendary Roger Deakins. Because not only is this a career-defining performance from Paul Dano, it’s also the best performance ever from Hugh Jackman in the intense role of the determined, grieving father Keller Dover, and also just more masterful work from Denis Villeneuve, who absolutely deserved a Best Director nod here.
Prisoners tells a missing child story set around Thanksgiving, where two families come together but then suddenly find their daughters missing, with a suspicious RV parked on their street having a hand in their disappearance. The prime suspect soon becomes Dano’s Alex Jones, an enigmatic low-IQ individual who is not all he seems, and that interrogation scene between his character and Hugh Jackman’s in the bathroom is an all-timer movie moment. The ending to Prisoners will haunt you as well.