Vince Vaughn is through being the DELIVERY MAN for horseshit lite comedies that serve solely as vehicles for his screen persona while neutering the very things that made him a star in the first place. He’s making an obvious play to change his image, between his run on TRUE DETECTIVE (which, say what you will, wasn’t even remotely in his comfort zone), his upcoming role in Mel GIbson’s HACKSAW RIDGE, and his upcoming, non-comedic reteam with Jon Favreau and Peter Billingsley, TERM LIFE. For his next trick, he’ll be playing convicted South African murderer Piet Blomfield opposite Forest Whitaker as the famed social activist Archbishop Desmond Tutu.
Whitaker and KILLING FIELDS/THE MISSION director (and SUPER MARIO BROS. shepherd) Roland Joffe have been attached to this project, an adaptation of a play called The Archbishop and the Antichrist by Michael Ashton, for a few years now, but it seems that Vaughn’s casting was the icing on the cake that'll get a distributor. They’re shopping the film at AFM, with this cast and Tutu’s cultural cachet, North American distribution doesn’t seem like it’ll be impossible to nab.
Whitaker’s a working actor, meaning that he’s as likely to pop up in action films or DTV dreck unworthy of his talents as he is to headlining Oscar bait like THE BUTLER, but there’s no doubt that he tends to absolutely kill it when given the opportunity. Despite the difference in appearance, he seems like a natural fit to depict Tutu’s collected, occasionally cheeky attitude.
As for Vaughn, his pragmatic criminal on TRUE DETECTIVE was his first murderous asshole since DOMESTIC DISTURBANCE, and he didn’t exactly set the world on fire, just as he didn’t as Norman in the PSYCHO remake (though his turn in CLAY PIGEONS is worth of revisiting). Personally, I thought his Frank Seymon was a great movie star turn, bizarre, arch, and thoroughly him; he took the role and showed vulnerability and grittiness while still making it his in a way that I found a great relief after years of blowing him off as a comfortable Hollywood sell-out. He’ll probably tone it down a bit here, but I know he, as well as Whitaker and Joffe, have the collective chops to make this something, at best, worthy of Oscar attention, or at least something worth our two hours.
