Black Sea, Cake take Jude Law, Jennifer Aniston separate ways

Jude Law shines underwater in Black Sea, but Cake turns out to be a poor dramatic vessel for Jennifer Aniston.

Jennifer Aniston and Chris Messina in the predictable and maudlin Cake.

This is a tale of two superstars of cinema in midlife career crunches: Jennifer Aniston and Jude Law. It could also be a more complicated tale about the screwed-up expectations of gender on screen, but this is not the place to delve into that.

First Law. The Brit beauty has always been a very good actor but not always the best selector. After a 1990s in which he emerged from British television to become the spunk in Wilde, Gattaca and especially The Talented Mr Ripley, the big films that came his way all fizzled to varying degrees until a late bump playing Watson to Robert Downey Jr’s Sherlock Holmes. It seems to have relaxed him and Law has gained credibility as his hair has receded, with terrific recent performances in Side Effects, Dom Hemingway, The Grand Budapest Hotel, and now the submarine drama Black Sea.

He seems a more appealing actor now, less the pretty boy and more a character in each film. He certainly throws himself into Kevin Macdonald’s Black Sea, a simple thriller that works rather well, with sharp direction and a charismatic cast that includes the similarly in-form and seemingly relaxed Ben Mendelsohn.

Black Sea (M, eOne, 11 min, $29.99) is a hidden treasure heist movie set in a sub that clips along, nodding to its genre without hanging around to become just another film. Law is central as the rogue sub captain who is sucked into an illegitimate job after being made redundant by his salvage company. He throws himself into the role, physically and with his Scottish accent, delivering one of his most substantial lead performances in some time.

Aniston might have hoped her performance in Cake would be substantial.

At least substantial enough to erase the memory of some really poor comedies. She turns up on the screen more frequently than any of her fellow Friends alumni, yet you’d be hard-pressed to recall any performance of great merit. DVD Letterbox would go back to Marley & Me, perhaps, but that was more about the film. If you look at the big-budget comedies in which Aniston has appeared in the past decade, she’s verging on Katherine Heigl-type predictability with Adam Sandler-type results. At least Sandler has pulled off a couple of strong dramatic turns.

Cake (MA15+, Warner, 98min, $39.95) is not Aniston’s best dramatic turn, though. It’s obvious why she chose it: she plays the victim of a car crash whose anger and pain lead to a kind of renewal. It’s not the acting that lets the film down, however. Cake’s other components are so slack and melodramatic, and its screenplay so predictable, that it becomes maudlin and plodding.

Which is a shame because Aniston needs encouragement to move away from pedestrian comedies where she is obliged to be funny and still strip to her lingerie. She’s far better than that, as Cake hints.

Twitter: @michaelbodey

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