by Nathaniel R
Dylan and Sean Penn earlier this summer at Cannes.
Former movie star Sean Penn celebrated his 61st birthday just two days ago and now welcomes his sixth directorial effort, Flag Day, into US theaters. Though Penn's name was once intoned with a kind of reverence by fellow actors and critics his film career has been curiously uneventful for a decade now (with his supporting role in The Tree of Life, 2011, his last real prestigious success... and mostly by association at that). One suspects the fading film career is more from a shift in his own interest and priorities given his political activism than a lack of opportunities but it's always hard to know given the fickle nature of Hollywood and stardom in general.
Can Flag Day serve as a kind of jumpstart for a comeback in the next few years? Does he even want that? He has two films (as an actor) in preproduction now, a drama with Dakota Johnson and a drama with Tye Sheridan. How many of his six directorial efforts have you seen? The posters are after the jump...
After the mob drama State of Grace (1990) Sean Penn took a three year break from movie stardom which began by getting behind the camera. His directorial debut was The Indian Runner (1991) a Vietnam War era drama about a vet (the then little known Viggo Mortensen) in conflict with his brother (David Morse). The small scale drama received mostly positive reviews but an itty bitty release in theaters (nine of them at its widest) before vanishing. In short people didn't really think of Penn as a director yet.
His next, a revenge drama about a jeweller whose daughter was killed by a drunk driver, arrived with more fanfare. It opened a month before his next Oscar bid as a movie star (Dead Man Walking) and was headlined by the Oscar-winning superstar Jack Nicholson. The Crossing Guard. But it also received just a miniscule release and didn't catch on.
The third film, a mainstream but dour police investigation drama called The Pledge (2001) which also starred Nicholson) opened to respectable reviews in January and though it didn't catch fire at theaters grossing under its budget (even when international revenue was accounted for) one got the sense that Penn was going to stick with this new role despite a then-strong onscreen career which would bring him his third Best Actor citation a year later for I Am Sam.
The mid Aughts proved a magical time for Penn. His onscreen career was going superbly with successes like 21 Grams, and Mystic River, and would end with an Oscar winning bang with Milk (2008). But just before the second Best Actor Oscar win, he finally won equally strong raves as a director. Into the Wild his only film (to date) that the holy trifecta of audiences / critics / awards bodies all loved was a true story drama about a top student dropping out of mainstream life to live alone in the wilderness. It earned a respectable $56 million globally and received plentiful awards buzz. Curiously, despite momentum and goodwill for Penn's work behind the camera and the film itself, and major boosts from precursors like DGA, SAG, NBR, Gothams, and Critics Choice Awards, it stalled out at the big televised awards shows receiving only two minor Globe nods (Score & Song) and two Oscar nods (Supporting Actor and Editing). Are you still salty about this as some fans are?
Penn's heyday as a movie star bizarrely ended quite abruptly after his second Best Actor win. The 2010s were non eventful in front of the camera and mostly behind it too. Though the one big even was the notorious flopping of thisromantic drama/ social horrors issue movie The Last Face (2016). Premiering at Cannes where it was torn to shreds, it whimpered to release around the world during 2017. Despite two Oscar winning movie stars as headliners and an Oscar winning movie star behind the camera it was universally hated (8% Rotten Tomatoes score -- yikes) and earned only $1 million in global release.
Five years later Sean Penn bravely returned to Cannes and had better luck with Flag Day (2021), which he both directs and co-stars in after very little film work in the past handful of years. Better luck is still not great luck. The film has received mixed to negative reviews (including right here) though some critics like his daughter Dylan Penn's leading performance quite a lot. The film is based on the memoirs of Jennifer Vogel's difficult family life with a criminal father. It arrives in theaters today from MGM/UA.
What do you think of Sean Penn's career as a director and do you think he'll ever get really interested in acting again?
P.S. Just for fun here's a photo of Sean Penn (then 20) on the set of the military school drama Taps, his debut film 40 years ago. It was the second movie for Tom Cruise (18), his co-star. (Timothy Hutton, of Ordinary People fame, who had just become the all time youngest winner of Best Supporting Actor at 20, was the lead.)