In Hargitay's defense, I think the guy taking her hostage had just gotten shot by Vincent Spano; I'd make that face too. On the other hand, she could have just read yet another script in which a member of the Stabler family is kidnapped, arrested, or pinned in a wrecked car while delivering a baby. Because: seriously.

Even if the Brando comparison is one I'd consider compelling — and it isn't, as I think Brando himself is over-praised — I couldn't get on board with that over-praise either.I've never thought that Rourke is bad; he's good at what he's asked to do, usually, even excellent on occasion.But you have to look at what he's asked to do, or what he's actually doing.Not a lot, often, and when you put what Rourke does next to amped-up gabbling (Nicolas Cage and Vincent Spano, Rumble Fish; Eric Roberts, The Pope of Greenwich Village) or pouty posing/peering through eyelashes (Kim Basinger, 9½ Weeks), it's going to look a lot more considered and professional than it is.Even when it's very good, it's relative to the crap surrounding it.

It's very good here.Did it deserve the Oscar?I didn't see Milk, so I can't speak to that role, but I like it when an actor doesn't feel he has to "show the work" and be in motion every second he's onscreen, and Rourke did marvelous, understated work in The Wrestler — but I think Richard Jenkins did the same sort of thing just as well in The Visitor.

Rourke also benefited from strong writing and production design.The shots of Randy with his blond topknot and his hearing aid, puttering through the dollar store, have a narrative depth of field that's nice, and part of that is Rourke and the way he has the character walk.Most of it, though, is the production values, or shot set-ups like the one from behind Randy at the fan event, panning across these other busted dudes with their VHS tapes and their war wounds, the low ceiling pressing them down.The movie itself doesn't put a foot wrong — well, the scene where he quits the Acme is a bit tired, but not to the point of bothering me, really — and neither does Rourke, but I have to wonder how much of that is the casting.

Rourke does have one bit of business he does that nobody in film does better, though, and I hope I can explain it.He does it when Randy wants to go over the moves with the Ayatollah, and the Ayatollah blows him off all "you're the face, I'm the heel, next," and Rourke makes a face that says, "…So you're that guy.Okay then."He does it in Diner when Bagel mentions Boogie's father and Boogie says, "Look, uh, leave my father out of it."

You can express the same thing a number of different ways, facially — an eye-roll, a jaw-clench — but Rourke looks into the middle distance and does a small, visual snort type of thing.It has an unshowy defeatedness to it that I like.

I got to thinking about the things that certain actors do well, things we may forget about after a while, when I watched Criminal Law the other day.No damn idea why I recorded it off IFC, and the movie does almost nothing right except for putting Gary Oldman in the lead.

Oldman is Ben Chase, a former prosecutor turned slick defense attorney, who gets Kevin Bacon off on a murder rap; then Bacon retains him permanently, as insurance (don't ask), then keeps a-killin', because Bacon's mother performs abortions as part of her GYN practice, and as a child, Bacon walked in on a late-term termination and it traumatized him (don't ask), so he kills patients of his mother's who have terminated pregnancies, stuffs diapers in their mouths, and lights them on fire…when he's not staring at Oldman like Oldman is a delicious dessert of some sort.That I can forgive; Oldman has amazing poofy '80s hair that does resemble a meringue in some scenes, and he is so young and cute, running around in thunderstorms feeling responsible for Bacon's crime spree, playing squash, and having uncomfortable rough sex with Agent Sanseverino from The Sopranos, then averting his eyes politely when she's bad at onscreen crying. (She's pretty damn good at kicking Bacon in the nuts, though. Git it, Karen Young!)

The movie is garbage dump of dumb twists, rain-machine abuse, weird "we're not really talking about boats anymore, are we" double non-tendres, and C-plus attempts by Bacon to portray a psycho killer via "I am fey, FEAR ME" staring — but Oldman finds a way to react to the ridiculous in a realistic way.Joe Don Baker says at one point, and I quote, "A crazy killer is crazy.And he will kill you."I said, out loud, "Thanks, Joe Don Baker!You're awesome!Now back in your hole," and then there was a cut to Oldman, making that exact face.Hee.Thanks, Gary Oldman!You're awesome!

He's a good listener on film, better than most; when someone else is talking, my eyes go to Oldman hearing, processing.It seems like he went through a period back in the '90s where every role required him to have seriously disgusting teeth, dreads, and a substance-abuse problem, and it felt like the scripts and the designers would load his characters up with kookoopants visual signifiers and rando dialogue and he'd have to eat a bug or some damn thing, which he would do 100 percent because he's a pro, but after a while I forgot that he has a nice smile and can play normal people with wives and floss and whatnot.He still gave you the piano moments amid all the forte crashing around, because he reacts instead of merely waiting for his next cue; he has a couple of nice bits in The Professional, which he had to wring out of that character as written.It just got harder and harder to find him under all the prosthetics.

I did not recognize him for an hour in Batman Begins, and yes, he had the big old mustache, but really it's because they gave him a normal person to play, and I sat in the theater all, "Who's that Ned Flanders-looking guy, he's really good in this ro– holy shit, it's Oldman!"He's not a drug dealer, or a terrorist, or Beethoven, or goddamn Reverend Dimmesdale.He's just reacting in 3D to cartoonish circumstances around him.When Gordon reappears in The Dark Knight after getting "killed," Oldman pulls a few sweet faces to indicate that the character is kind of tickled to have fooled everyone, despite the emotional cost, and this is what makes Oldman a great actor, I think — that when the direction allows it, he gives you texture.