The Legend of Bagger Vance

Matt Damon rarely gives a bad performance in a good movie, but some movies have so many problems, no one can escape their terrible gravity. Sports movies are hard to pull off even before you add in a Magical Negro stereotype, and sports movies about golf — which is an acquired taste, we can all agree — are even harder. (Unless they feature a gopher, obviously.) Bagger Vance looks good, but the story is dull and the emotions don't resonate. Damon never really inhabits his character, perhaps because there's not much character to inhabit, and even he can't make the transition from traumatized drunk to redeemed golf hero feel like anything close to real. The racial ickiness of the story casts an unfortunate light over the whole film, to be sure, but Damon does nothing to help himself.

The Brothers Grimm

It's frustrating to find moments of beauty and brilliance in what's otherwise a mess. But that's the cross Terry Gilliam fans have often had to bear. The Brothers Grimm sure looks pretty, and there are bright spots here and there, but Matt Damon's performance... is not one of them. The awful wig doesn't help, but neither does his specious British accent. While his co-star Heath Ledger sinks into his role reasonably well, Damon always feels like Damon in a bad wig with a bad accent. Something about his brand of humor (or at least the brand he brought to the table here) seems out of place in Gilliam's world, and his comedic moments feel jarringly broad.

All The Pretty Horses

Let's get this out of the way first: we just don't buy Damon as a cowboy. (Or at least not this kind of cowboy; move the setting forward a decade or two and he could work as one of the modernized cowboys of Brokeback Mountain.) But the real problem with his performance as John Grady Cole, and with the film as a whole, is that for a tale of epic romance, it feels pretty cold. The fault doesn't rest entirely on his shoulders, but Damon never seems to find a spark with onscreen love interest Penelope Cruz. While he's not laughably bad — this isn't his Catwoman or anything — and we can tell he's trying, the whole thing comes off as flat as a flapjack on a Texas prairie. Or something. (Look, we wouldn't cast ourselves as cowboys either.)

 

S.W.A.T.

If this were the only action movie on Renner's CV, he certainly wouldn't be taking over as the lead of the Bourne series. Nor would he have gone toe-to-toe with Cruise or joined the Avengers. Because S.W.A.T. is not good. Remember what we said about Renner avoiding mere stereotype in The Hurt Locker? He has no such luck here as the good-guy-gone-bad Brian Gamble. (Naturally, the film's climax involves a mano-a-mano fight between Renner and former best friend Colin Farrell. Will good triumph over evil? Yes.) Renner brings his trademark intensity — maybe not a good thing in a film so silly — but all he ever really hits are the expected notes for an action-movie baddie.

The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things

In the 2002 serial-killer biopic Dahmer, Renner proved he could bring complexity to a monstrous villain. Renner's character in The Heart Is Deceitful is a child rapist; there's really no coming back from that for the character, obviously, but Renner's performance doesn't do much to make us believe that there is a human there, as opposed to a stock portrayal of a Bad Person. The character as presented gets barely any shading, but that's the kind of thing Renner might've provided, even if it was nowhere to be found in the script. Our theory: he was phoning it in because he realized what a shambles this film would turn out to be.

National Lampoon's Senior Trip

We almost didn't include this 1995 film, because we thought it would be unsportsmanlike. Is there any way to come back from a reviled National Lampoon film? Is there any way to come back from that hair? Renner's acting debut is a painfully misguided teen "comedy," so inept that it feels like it came from another dimension — one where the '70s and the '90s happened at the same time, where crossing guards send children into traffic, and where mean-spirited assholes are roguish and appealing. With a grating smirk, Renner plays the main asshole, whose name is Dags or Chit or Trup or something. If you're feeling masochistic, the whole movie is available on YouTube, where one commenter summed up Renner's performance perfectly: "Now he is better, more hotter."