The Best and Worst of Jason Mitchell

“The Best and Worst of” series 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 “Superfly” star Jason Mitchell.

Films starring Jason Mitchell that I've seen:
Contraband
Broken City
Straight Outta Compton
Keanu
Kong: Skull Island
Detroit
Mudbound
The Disaster Artist

Best Performance: Straight Outta Compton (2015)
Mitchell's current status as one of the industry's most respected young actors can be traced back to his breakout role as Eazy-E in Straight Outta Compton. With his magnetic presence and incredible emotional range, Mitchell's awards-caliber performance was a big part of the reason why the N.W.A. biopic went down as a standout entry in the genre.

Worst Performance: Kong: Skull Island (2017)
Like just about everyone else in Kong: Skull Island's wildly talented ensemble cast, Mitchell's character is there to fight giant monsters and occasionally participate in a conversation about said monsters. While Mitchell handles this task competently, Skull Island is the only time where I've watched something he was in for more than a few minutes and wasn't notably impressed with his performance, which is enough for it to pick up this unfortunate distinction.   

Best Film: Straight Outta Compton (2015)
Biopics have a bad tendency of not even beginning to scratch the surface of their subject matter. Straight Outta Compton marked an increasingly rare instance of a film dedicated to telling the story of an iconic figure (or in this case, figures) that was willing to subvert that formula. Andrea Berloff and Jonathan Herman's terrific script manages to hit all out of the obligatory rise-and-fall footnotes in N.W.A's career while also serving as a deep exploration of what made each prominent member tick. Combine this dense, cliché-averting script with an electric sense of energy and terrific performances from every actor that has significant screen time (Mitchell, O'Shea Jackson Jr., Corey Hawkins, Paul Giamatti), and you have one of the most absorbing and flat-out fantastic films in recent history.

Worst Film: Broken City (2013)
Broken City is one of those cinematic failures that just seems implausible. It has all the ingredients for a successful film (talented ensemble cast, director with a good track record, solid premise about a disgraced former police officer turned private investigator that stumbles into a web of corruption centered around the mayor of New York City), yet it somehow ends up being a dull thriller that offers up next-to-no suspense or entertainment value.

Thank you for reading this week's edition of “The Best and Worst of”. The next victim of my praise and ire will be “Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom” star Bryce Dallas Howard.