Throughout his long career in Hollywood (dating back to The Goonies), Josh Brolin has proven that he can be a little bit of a chameleon. He fits just as well in the world of Dune, for example, as he does in worlds that are much more grounded in reality.
Now that he’s set to return as Gurney Halleck in Dune 2, though, this is the perfect moment to check out a few of the other great movies that Brolin has made throughout his career. Here are three you should definitely start with:
Sicario (2015)
Sicario deploys Brolin perfectly as the kind of muscled-up agent who seems relaxed but hides plenty of menace behind his easy posture. The movie, which tells the story of an FBI agent who is recruited to join a task force designed to take down the Mexican cartels that are trafficking drugs into the US, is ultimately about the corruption at the heart of America’s war on drugs.
Brolin is an ideal surrogate for that complicity, a man who seems to have no moral code beyond what he’s told to do and someone who looks equally calm in flip-flops and tactical gear.
Sicario is streaming on Amazon Prime Video.
No Country for Old Men (2007)
Undoubtedly one of the Coen brothers’ very best movies, No Country for Old Men stars Brolin as a man who finds a suitcase full of money while hunting and finds himself on the run both from the police and from an almost-inhuman hired gun who is out to find him. What starts as a simple crime thriller evolves into something much more profound, though, thanks in part to Brolin’s sublimely human central performance.
Tommy Lee Jones and Javier Bardem get all of the showiest moments in the script, but Brolin is tasked with just playing a regular guy, and he carries the role off to perfection. No Country is a fairly bleak movie, but it’s the kind of experience you’re not going to forget anytime soon.
No Country for Old Men is streaming for free on Pluto TV.
Hail, Caesar! (2016)
One of the most surprising things about Josh Brolin, given his impeccably square jaw, is how versatile he can be as a performer. In Hail, Caesar! he reteamed with the Coen brothers that he could be as great as the lead of one of their lighter movies as he was in one of their dramas. Brolin plays Eddie Mannix, a Hollywood fixer who works for a major studio and spends his days trying to ensure that the various temperamental stars in the studio’s employ stay mostly out of trouble.
There are tons of running threads here, and Brolin is tasked with holding it all together so that a roster of more limited performers can have their moments to shine. It’s precisely because Brolin is so capable, though, that the movie feels like it holds together at all.
Hail, Caesar! can be rented or purchased on Amazon Prime Video.
