The Best and Worst of Matt Damon

The "Best and Worst" series profiles the best and worst work of an actor starring in one of the week's new theatrical releases. This week I take a look at the filmography of "The Martian" star Matt Damon.

Film starring Matt Damon that I've seen:
Good Will Hunting
Chasing Amy
Saving Private Ryan
Dogma
The Legend of Bagger Vance
Ocean's Eleven
Stuck on You
The Bourne Identity 
Ocean's Twelve
The Bourne Supermacy
The Departed
The Bourne Ultimatum 
Ocean's Thirteen 
The Informant!
Green Zone
True Grit
The Adjustment Bureau
Contagion
We Bought a Zoo
Elysium
The Monuments Men
Interstellar

Best Performance: Good Will Hunting (1997)
Damon's major film debut was as strong of a first impression as you can possibly make in Hollywood. Will Hunting is one of the recognizable and celebrated big-screen characters of the past two decades and Damon's sensitive and multi-layered performance is largely responsible for that. Damon's ability to convey a wide range of emotions and make a very flawed human being so likable and sympathetic makes this performance an absolute wonder to behold.

Worst Performance: Stuck on You (2003)
Damon can do comedy well, but you wouldn't know that from watching Stuck on You. Damon completely misses the mark as a conjoined twin who's reluctantly moves to Hollywood so his brother (an equally bad Greg Kinnear) can pursue his dream of being an actor. Damon is stiff and awkward in the role and somehow manages to be the worst part of a movie that fails on just about every conceivable level.   

Best Film: The Departed (2006)
In the three months I've been doing this series, this was the hardest pick I've had to make. Damon's filmography is loaded with phenomenal films (Dogma, True Grit, Ocean's Eleven, Saving Private Ryan, the aforementioned Good Will Hunting) that are amongst my all time-favorites. After some fierce internal debate, I opted to go with Martin Scorsese's The Departed. The Departed is pretty much the perfect crime drama with an engaging, multi-faceted story, lively characters, sharp dialogue that's loaded with fantastic one-liners, some well-placed moments of brutal violence and most importantly, note-perfect performances from everyone in the film's A-list acting ensemble. Scorsese's legacy is largely defined by his work in the gangster film genre and while others are bound to disagree, I think The Departed is easily the most captivating and well-crafted mobster tale he's ever crafted. 

Worst Film: Ocean's Twelve (2004)
I will never forget the disappointment I felt after watching Ocean's Twelve. It was the night of my 13th birthday and my mom took me to Blockbuster after we went out to dinner to rent this. I had seen Ocean's Eleven on TNT a few months beforehand and given the fact that nearly all of the cast and crew from the original were returning, I figured the sequel would be similarly great. After watching it, I desperately wished I had chose another movie to celebrate my birthday with. How could the sequel to a movie that was so fun and well-written be so boring and inept? It's been 10 years since I saw Ocean's Twelve and I'm still perplexed by how this film turned out to be such a colossal failure. Ocean's Thirteen absolved some of Ocean's Twelve's sins of by giving the series a worthy conclusion, but that doesn't detract from how much of a soul-crushing disappointment this was.

 Thank you for reading this week's installment of "The Best and Worst of". Next week, I'll take a look at the best and worst work of "Pan" star Hugh Jackman.