Ryan Reynolds Gambles (and Wins) With a Career-Best Performance in 'Mississippi Grind'

It’s a problem that’s nagged Hollywood for a few years now: What to do with Ryan Reynolds? Though the 38-year-old has had his share of boldface-ensuring box-office hits (The Proposal, Safe House) and cred-accruing indies (Adventureland, Buried), he’s spent the last few years trying — and failing — to be everything from a superhero (The Green Lantern) to a sci-fi action star (R.I.P.D.) to a bromedian (The Change-Up).

But with yesterday’s Sundance premiere of Mississippi Grind — an affecting, ambling gambling drama that features the best performance of Reynolds’ career — it’s clear that all Reynolds needed was a director who could dig past the actor’s natural, sometimes overpowering charisma, and divine the longing underneath. In this case, Reynolds got two such directors: Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck, whose 2006 drama Half Nelson proved to be a breakout for Ryan Gosling, and who clearly have a thing for troubled, addiction-prone characters lacking any real mooring in their lives.

In Grind, Reynolds plays Curtis, a good-luck charm and drifter who materializes one day at an Iowa casino, where he meets Gerry (Ben Mendelsohn), a gambling addict who’s in debt, and slipping into an assuredly depressed middle-age. The two connect over their love of betting on anything — poker, horses, pool — and embark on a car trip to New Orleans. Along the way, they stop to repair (or further rupture) the various personal relationships they’ve mucked up in the past. It’s one part Sideways, one part Robert Altman’s California Split, and like fellow Sundance entry The End of the Tour, its power comes from the way it details the awkwardness of grown-up friendship.

As played by Reynolds and Mendelsohn — the Australian actor who’s been government-certified Great in Everything since 2010’s Animal Kingdom — Gerry and Curtis are perfect foils for each other: Gerry, despite his troubles, is an eternal optimist trying to right his wrongs and find stability in his life; Curtis is a user, a guy who latches on to cities and people for months at at time, then quickly discards them. On screen, Reynolds has always alternated between piston-oiled charm and distant-eyed aloofness; in Grind, he combines them so smoothly that you can never quite guess Gerry’s next move or motivation, giving the two men’s relationship (and the movie) an unexpected tension. It’s a truly super-heroic performance, and one of the festival's most pleasant surprises thus far.