After watching Deadwood, the movie, I felt the need to shout from my rooftop, all because of Ian McShane. Ian, what a miraculous performance, in your representation of a sinful man who felt the remorse of his actions, both past and present, throughout the HBO Series and movie. You have played a significant role in my life as from the characters you have played over the years, and my study of your work. You have a unique gift of casting a perfect light on the terrible decisions people can be drawn to make for love, greed, revenge, and a proper scale of life. In John Wick, you played a cool character who was literally a referee between good and evil, and a cool-headed moderator in the midst of chaos. In American Gods, you have drawn about, a sense of ominous and yet merciful leadership in your character, irrespective and despite that which has otherwise been poor writing or directing. In Ray Donovan, as well, you carried yourself so as to make others perceive (probably literally) your persona as something of a rock of solidarity they likely wished they possessed.
But you messed it all up. Your audience is not from Hollywood. They are real people who consume your work as a means of establishing, not only, the entertainment of the night, but you help us assess our own decisions in life, our justifications we give ourselves, our own individual compasses by which we evaluate our surroundings and the things that happen to us. I have one more statement of kudo for you. There aren’t many actors, in my opinion, who can play the role of a protagonist, who are also the antagonist, or at least, that character who pulls at the heartstrings of both, our sense of righteousness, revenge, gluttony, and balance all at the same time. You are a master at it. But man, oh man. You so made me shout out loud at the end of the movie, Deadwood. You broke my heart, in your last words of that movie. You’ve done well, in long past performances and recent, to ride that thin line, whereby, you can share your personality, and not cast an unwanted shadow upon the characters you so carefully play. But if I were you, and I was being paid to play that last scene in Deadwood, the Movie, I’d have told the writers… STOP. I’m not going there. I don’t want to cast GOD out of that character, and I don’t want to tell millions of viewers that they should shoo away their maker. For that, I wept. So if you were looking for a strong reaction: Bravo! But if you were looking to make your viewers feel you had served your purpose, you failed. I’ll take my own queue as it relates to American Gods (and anything else you cast in), and let the wandering writing speak for my future viewing decisions, and I’ll abandon my loyalty to your characters, as you have lost my sense of trust in your ability to keep it real, and to keep us, the audience, wanting to be seen by God, not as rags, in the eyes of our creator. Worse, I’d like to avoid anything that casts our God out as irrelevant or nonexistent. Shame, dude. Know when to call the ball with your own seniority on the set.