No Actor Had a Better Year Than Colin Farrell

Since beginning his career in the late 1990s, universally derided Alexander cooled the actor’s jets for a while, while Farrell also rode out some personal relationship drama and a trip to rehab.

He came out the other end of that phase with more managed expectations, transitioning from standard leading man fare to more wide-ranging character roles in films like Cassandra’s Dream, the now classic Saving Mr. Banks, and Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them.

Now, at the age of 46, Farrell may have had his strongest year yet in 2022, giving four powerful performances in four vastly different movies, with the last of the quartet earning him not just a string of critics’ and Oscar precursor awards, but his first shot at the Best Actor Academy Award itself. Easily capable of playing a courageous hero, a grotesque villain, or a sensitive innocent twisted by circumstances beyond his understanding, Farrell is inarguably one of our best working actors and screen presences today. Let’s take a look at the work he gave us in 2022.

After Yang

Premiering at the Cannes Film Festival in 2021, this delicate indie sci-fi drama from director Kogonada (Columbus) opened on March 4, 2022 in limited release. Farrell stars as Jake, a husband and father in a vaguely dystopian future whose family is thrown into turmoil when their android companion and caregiver Yang (Justin H. Min) malfunctions. While attempting to get Yang repaired, Jake discovers that the robot has hidden memories of his previous lives, raising questions about whether Yang was actually alive and capable of human emotion.

Farrell is restrained and melancholy as Jake, who gradually awakens to the fact that the companion his family took for granted—and upon whom they had all become increasingly reliant—may have yearned for and even had a full life before being sold to them. The role is easily the most subdued of the four that Farrell played last year, but is still full of rich emotional textures and moments. After Yang was probably also the least seen of his 2022 movies, and should be a title that fans seek out in the future.

The Batman

Coming out the same day as After Yang—although on considerably more screens and with considerably more fanfare—striking new versions of classic of the Bat’s famous rogues gallery. Perhaps none personified the comic book villain better, and arguably stole the movie, than Colin Farrell’s take on Oswald Cobblepot, aka the Penguin.

While the cartoonish ‘60s TV version played by Burgess Meredith and the ghoulish freak embodied by Danny DeVito in larger-than-life and menacing, and for our money, his Penguin is the definitive one.

Thirteen Lives

Launching a brief run in theaters at the end of last July before premiering on Prime Video on Aug. 5, Ron Howard’s Thirteen Lives seemed at first glance to be redundant: this dramatization of the 2018 Tham Luang cave rescue—in which 12 boys and an assistant coach from a northern Thailand soccer team were extracted from a flooded mountain cave system after being trapped for two weeks—had already been preceded by a documentary called The Rescue, with Netflix preparing its version as well. But Howard’s film, while pedestrian in spots, turned out to be quite a gripping recreation of the events, with Farrell and Viggo Mortensen headlining as the two British divers who led the rescue operation.

The film offers some perfunctory backstory for both men, but that is more or less forgotten once the operation begins. Farrell is credible and believable as John Volanthen, a professional diver and rescuer undertaking an incredibly dangerous mission who remains calm and resolute throughout the crisis. Both Farrell and Mortensen underplay a bit, allowing the gravity of the mission and the team effort to take center stage instead of showy individual heroics. It’s not a great film, but a worthy one, and coming after his widescreen villainy in The Batman, it offers a nice snapshot of Farrell’s range.

The Banshees of Inisherin

We don’t think Farrell has ever been better than in his third collaboration with writer-director Martin McDonagh, following In Bruges and Seven Psychopaths. Farrell plays Pádraic, a kind, warmhearted, if somewhat simple, man who lives with his sister (Kerry Condon) on the island of Inisherin off the coast of Ireland circa 1923. Pádraic is utterly flummoxed one day when his best friend and regular afternoon pub partner, Colm (Brendan Gleeson), abruptly informs him that the friendship is over because Colm finds Pádraic to be dull. Pádraic becomes desperate to understand Colm and salvage their relationship, even as the breach escalates to acts of petty violence and mean-spiritedness.