James Woods

In Casino (1995), James Woods plays Lester Diamond, a hustler whose sleaze is hard to overlook. The quick speech and nervous shifts of manner give us plenty to watch without giving us much reason to like him. We found Lester repellent, and enjoyed watching him more than we cared to admit, because Woods makes his hustling so energetic. Martin Scorsese gives that familiar Woods manner a fitting job to do.

The breakthrough came with Gregory Powell in The Onion Field (1979), a part that established his screen intensity. The 1980s gave him both leading and supporting parts, including Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in America (1984) and the reckless journalist Richard Boyle in Salvador (1986). By the 1990s, supporting roles were an important strand of the work. Casino makes a strong case for using his intensity in short stretches, where there is less opportunity for it to become tiring.

His strength is in the diction and the quick changes of manner, which give con men and outsiders recognisable human behaviour. We can understand what keeps them going without being asked to forgive them. The limitation is that repeated casting as the wired, sleazy man can make a performance feel familiar before it has begun. His voice work as Hades in Hercules (1997) is worth considering too, for the distinctive delivery alone.

We would not choose Contact (1997), in which he plays Michael Kitz, as an introduction to his work. Our enthusiasm there rests chiefly with Jodie Foster and the excitement of discovery in Robert Zemeckis's science fiction. For Woods, Casino offers the clearer starting point, though its repeated confrontations do wear us down. Sharon Stone makes the personal turmoil matter; Lester supplies a more concentrated dose of bad company. Begin there, provided an evening with people this unpleasant sounds like entertainment.