The Best and Worst of Patrick Wilson

"The Best and Worst of" chronicles the career highlights and lowlights of an actor starring in one of the week's new theatrical releases. This week, I take a look at the filmography of "The Commuter" star Patrick Wilson.

Films starring Patrick Wilson that I've seen:
Hard Candy
Little Children
Watchmen
The A-Team
Insidious
Young Adult
Prometheus 
The Conjuring
Bone Tomahawk
The Conjuring 2
The Founder

Best Performance: Hard Candy (2006)
Of the abundance of middle-aged character actors that have been steadily securing work over the past decade or so, I've always found Wilson to be one of the most anonymous. He's competent enough to avoid embarrassing himself yet lacks the spark or presence to be a standout performer. Hard Candy was one of the two (Little Children being the other) films where he rose above that stock competency. As an alleged pedophile that's been drugged and tortured by a 15-year old girl he met online (Ellen Page), Wilson displays an incredible range by making the character alternate between being a sympathetic figure and a despicable monster.

Worst Performance: Watchmen (2009)
I thought that Zack Snyder's polarizing adaptation of Watchmen contained a lot of admirable elements. Wilson's performance as Nite Owl II is not one of them. While I'm aware that this film is about broken-down superheroes that are forced back into action following the death of one of their colleagues (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), Wilson is so stiff in this role that I began to question whether or not he had a pulse by the time credits rolled.

Best Film: The A-Team (2010)
Few long-dead properties have been brought to the big screen as vividly and faithfully as The A-Team. Joe Carnahan's revival of the classic 80's television series is a loose, exhilarating ride thrill ride full of fun over-the-top action sequences and engaging performances from its perfectly-matched titular heroes (Liam Nesson, Bradley Cooper, Sharalto Copley, Quinton "Rampage" Jackson).

Worst Film: Insidious (2011)
It's been a little over five years since I saw Insidious and I'm still legimately stunned/impressed by just how hard it dropped the ball. It builds up a ton of good will out of the gate with the establishment of an eerie, tense atmosphere only to throw it all out the window with a final hour full of unintentionally hilarious jump scares and absurd plot developments. Director James Wan eventually achieved success with a similar formula on The Conjuring a few years later, but I'll never forget how much of a missed opportunity this film was.

Thank you for reading this week's installment of "The Best and Worst of". The next victim of my praise and ire will be "12 Strong" star Rob Riggle .