Orion Lee

King-Lu is a man with a plan, and Orion Lee plays him as though the plan were already halfway done. He talks about capital, about what might be done in a territory with one cow, and while he talks he is looking past whoever he is talking to, at the horizon where the money is. Then, outside his shack, he chops wood and says nothing at all, and that is the scene we remember.

Lee worked as a fund manager before training at LAMDA, and spent his early years on stage with the Royal Shakespeare Company, the National Theatre of Scotland, the Royal Court and the Abbey Theatre. On film he was a barman in Skyfall (2012), had small parts in Fury (2014), Justice League (2017) and Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017), a supporting role in X+Y (2015) and a television part in Chimerica (2019). None of it prepared anybody for Kelly Reichardt handing him half of First Cow (2020).

He carries it by listening. Cookie, John Magaro's cook, is a man who cannot stand up to anyone, and King-Lu talks enough for both of them; the film works because Lee lets Magaro's silences land before he fills them. The milk scheme is played like a heist, and we found ourselves gripping the arm of the chair over a bucket, which is down to the two men as much as to Reichardt's cutting. But the scene that moved us more than we thought it could is the wordless one, Cookie sweeping and putting a flower in a jar while King-Lu splits logs outside. Reichardt, who edits her own films, holds it a long time, and Lee does nothing in it except be a man who has noticed he is being looked after and has decided not to mention it. Magaro plays Cookie with his shoulders; Lee plays King-Lu with his eyes.

Lee has said King-Lu is "a person who belongs everywhere and belongs nowhere, and that's kind of inherent in me", and the casting has tended to take the point literally: he gets the immigrant, the outsider, the professional in a room where he does not quite fit. Since First Cow there has been a voice in Turning Red (2022) and a part in Project Hail Mary (2026), neither of which we have reviewed. The reservation about him, such as it is, is that a style this quiet may not travel far outside the sort of film Reichardt makes.

That is one very good performance and a great many small ones, which is a thin basis for a verdict and we will not pretend otherwise. What we can say is that when a director gave him room and a partner worth listening to, he knew exactly what to do with both. Somebody should try it again.