Peter Weller

There’s a fluctuant charm about certain actors that tend to play every role with the same face. Audience connection definitely allows them a bit of leeway. Robert De Niro is considered one of the greatest actors of all time but it is without any doubt that he has been phoning in the majority of his performances during the latter of his nearly four decades long career. Not everyone can be a chameleon the likes of Daniel Day Lewis, but then again it may take an insane offer for a Daniel Day Lewis to appear in a movie directed by Michael Bay and not Steven Spielberg or whichever director is primed for Oscar glory.

Instead I refer to the Christopher Walken’s of cinema. Thespians considered brilliant by their peers sometimes simply because they are very likeable people and when it comes time to chew up some scenery they deliver in top quality  fashion. These actors are often considered cult favorites.

Robocop will probably always be my favorite movie starring Peter Weller, but it’s not a Peter Weller movie. It’s a Paul Veerhoven movie with all of his trademarks deeply embedded throughout the feature – satirical commentary of the modern world and a heaping ton of gorgeous violence. However, the man is a first class director even without those things as he has proven with films such as Black Book. Yet, if it were not for Peter Weller being the man beneath the metal, or plastic and rubber coated to look like metal, the character would have had a completely different feel to it.

One of Peter Weller’s greatest strengths is the ability to lead an ensemble cast such as in Leviathan, a science fiction film that borrows from Ridley Scott’s Alien plot but instead of being in outer space with a murderous creature the crew is trapped underwater and becomes just another monster movie, but the cast with Peter Weller at the helm helps sell the movie. He walks around with the swagger of James Cagney but takes charge like John Wayne. He’s smooth and intense. This is very apparent in the movie Screamers, a movie about self-reproducing, homicidal robots that slowly start overtaking a military compound. All the lives in that compound are in his care and that’s all right because his attitude says everything is all right, but when push comes to shove he’s the first one out guns blazing.

 Carrying this aura of oddness about him, Peter Weller enjoys the unconventional roles – the conflicted personalities and tortured souls. David Cronenberg did his movie adaptation of William S. Burrough’s Naked Lunch pure justice when casting Weller as the lead. Weller made me want to be convinced that giant bugs were planning to overthrow America, and again Peter Weller took front and center amongst a well rounded cast that included Judy Davis, Ian Holm, Julian Sands, and Roy Scheider.

Peter Weller has been working steadily in movies and television for thirty-nine years. Starring in everything from crime dramas (Shoot the Moon) to blockbusters (Robocop) and will always have a cult following thanks to the underground classic The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8^th Dimension. He has one of the most recognizable voices in all of cinema, one that is layered thickly with authority and class and there will come a day when his star will shine brighter than before as he is currently appearing on the hit cable TV series Dexter and will be appearing in the upcoming J.J. Abrams Star Trek sequel. Peter Weller doesn’t need a catch phrase like “I’ll be back” because Peter Weller has never left.