News broke yesterday that Jared Leto had been cast in the forthcoming Blade Runner sequel, and reaction was mixed-to-hostile. The hostility stems in part, I think, from the fact that "the forthcoming Blade Runner sequel" is a thing that exists and is unnecessary to the point of annoyance. But there also seems to be a legitimate strain of Leto Fatigue in the critical world.
And I get it! We were treated to months of kooky stories about Jared Leto "acting weird" and "freaking out his co-stars" and "behaving like a sociopath" on the set of Suicide Squad, only to be confronted by a performance that was, shall we say, underwhelming. Whether it was underwhelming because of the direction he took the role or because Warners chopped massive sections of the Joker's screen time out of the film is hard to say; either way, it didn't knock our socks off.
But that's okay! Sometimes actors misfire. We should not let this misstep—combined with the inevitably annoying over-promotion surrounding a major blockbuster—cloud our judgment on Jared Leto. If the last two decades have shown us anything, it's that Leto is a pretty reliable presence in a motion picture.
He had a string of small but important roles in major flicks at the turn of the century. I was kind of surprised to see him pop up in The Thin Red Line (1998) when I rewatched it a couple of months back, but I don't know why; indeed, I was so taken by his presence as the wide-eyed, gum-chomping, in-over-his-young-head second lieutenant ordering a charge on a Japanese position that I used Leto—instead of Sean Penn or Nick Nolte or John Travolta or Jim Caviezel or Adrien Brody or John C. Reilly or George Clooney—to illustrate Line in my ranking of Malick's work:
Leto was also a key player in Fight Club, David Fincher's exploration of fascism, and the adaptation of American Psycho, Mary Harron's examination of 1980s excess. In both roles he plays a sacrificial lamb of sorts, falling prey to the loons at the films' center.
But it was in Darren Aronofsky's Requiem for a Dream that we got a taste of Leto's true talents. In one of the most disturbing films of the 2000s, Leto's turn as a junkie with delusions of grandeur remains one of the most haunting vision of addiction committed to the big screen. I remain convinced that showing Requiem for a Dream to every high school freshman would do more to reduce drug use than every DARE program combined. The cautionary tale derives much of its power from Leto's deterioration from bright-eyed smack hound to imprisoned amputee.
His work was hit and miss for a bit after Requiem—solid as Alexander the Great's male companion in Alexander; not quite right as Mark David Chapman in Chapter 27—before scoring a much-deserved Oscar win for Dallas Buyers Club. Though best known as the height of the recent McConnaisance, Dallas Buyers Club was also a welcome return to prominence for Leto, who brought a soulful grace to the transgender woman who helps Ron Woodroof (Matthew McConaughey) set up his medical drug distribution business.
Perhaps it’s that very Oscar win that has caused people to turn on Leto. This was about three million scandals ago, so you may have forgotten, but the perpetually offended were outraged the Academy would award a non-trans actor an Oscar for playing a trans part, one that was decried for trafficking in stereotypes. Maybe the rage has been simmering for some time, only to find expression in recent months with Suicide Squad's artistic and box office failure. It's too bad. Leto deserved the win. And a lifetime of solid acting shows he has earned the benefit of the doubt from us.