De Niro: No longer brilliant?

Earlier this year, the Independent Film Channel ran a quiz show in which one of the movie-trivia categories was “Robert De Niro Sells Out.”

One of the questions involved his appearance as Fearless Leader in a live-action version of “The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle.” Alas, it was hardly the only turkey under consideration. Indeed, the list of De Niro bombs has grown daunting.

Anyone care to remember “The Fan,” “Backdraft,” “Showtime” or (groan) "15 Minutes" and "Flawless"? In some of these, he was the central figure, in others part of an ensemble. In none of them did he suggest that he was once widely regarded as one of the best actors in the world.

There was a time when a new De Niro movie was an event, and he seemed to earn Academy Awards nominations just for showing up on a set. He won two Oscars, in 1975 and 1981, but it’s been more than a decade since the Academy voters have singled him out for a nomination.

Universal Pictures Two dramatic actors at a career crisis? Dustin Hoffman and Robert De Niro costar in "Meet the Fockers."

The only recent role that has made much of an impression is the threatening father in the cartoonish Ben Stiller comedy, “Meet the Parents.” A sequel, “Meet the Fockers,” in which he’ll be sharing the screen with Stiller, Barbra Streisand and Dustin Hoffman, is a December release.

More typical are his unsuccessful pairing with Eddie Murphy, “Showtime,” and the Billy Crystal comedy, “Analyze That” (a 2002 followup to their 1999 hit, “Analyze This”). Both were regarded as so bankrupt of ideas that critics wondered if De Niro had read the scripts before he signed on.

In this year’s “Godsend,” he played a maniacal doctor whose fetish for playing with steel balls appeared to be a conscious parody of Humphrey Bogart’s paranoid Capt. Queeg in “The Caine Mutinty.” In the recent, shamelessly derivative cartoon, “Shark Tale,” he got even fewer laughs providing the voice of a shark who has the personality of a Mafia don.

Clearly, the number of out-and-out wipeouts has reached saturation point. How did this happen? How did the once-brilliant De Niro become a joke on a quiz show?

Once: The next Brando
Identified early in his career as the new Brando, De Niro won his first Oscar for  “Godfather II,” in which he played the supporting role of young Don Corleone — Brando’s character from the first “Godfather.” He deliberately drew on the young Brando’s body language, creating a vivid portrait of a man with a formidable gift for making violence pay off for him.

He won his second Oscar for going beyond Brando, by undergoing a physical transformation and gaining 50 pounds to play the viciously anti-social prizefighter, Jake La Motta, in “Raging Bull.” It started a trend that recently led to Renee Zellweger puffing up for the “Bridget Jones’ Diary” movies and Christian Bale dropping enough pounds to pass for a skeleton in “The Machinist.”

Brando was also putting on weight around this time, and the extra pounds gave extra dramatic heft to his appearance in “Apocalypse Now,” though no one ever accused him of doing it for his art. Nor did he trim down afterward, as De Niro did.

By the time he’d picked up those Oscars, De Niro’s commitment to his art seemed unassailable. In the 1970s, he gave one brilliant performance after another: as the crazy street kid, Johnny Boy, in Martin Scorsese’s “Mean Streets”; as the dying, none-too-bright baseball player, Bruce Pearson, in “Bang the Drum Slowly”; the quietly manipulative movie producer, Monroe Stahr, in Elia Kazan’s “The Last Tycoon”; the alienated Vietnam vet, Travis Bickle, in Scorsese’s “Taxi Driver”; another haunted Vietnam vet, Michael Vronsky, in “The Deer Hunter”; and Liza Minnelli’s unreliable, coercive musician-husband, Jimmy Doyle, in Scorsese’s “New York, New York.”

His goofy late-1960s apprentice roles in Brian De Palma’s “Greetings” and “Hi, Mom!” (recently released on DVD) suggested a flair for black comedy that few directors knew how to exploit. But Scorsese recognized it and emphasized it in “The King of Comedy”; De Niro’s would-be talk-show host, Rupert Pupkin, remains a devastating portrait of a celebrity hound.

Boredom leads to hammy roles
Then the variety of roles faded, and De Niro started playing lowlifes almost exclusively. With rare exceptions (the liberated coma victim in 1990’s “Awakenings”), he started to repeat himself, sometimes verging on self-caricature. As Charlton Heston put it: “It’s ridiculous for an actor that good to keep playing Las Vegas hoods.”

Still, he remained quite watchable playing hoods and worse in Brian De Palma’s “The Untouchables” (he was a wonderfully hammy Al Capone) and such Scorsese vehicles as “Casino,” “GoodFellas” and “Cape Fear,” a 1991 remake for which he earned his last Oscar nomination. His bounty hunter in “Midnight Run,” his high-tech thief in “Heat” and his wary 1960s bus driver in “A Bronx Tale” also had their moments.

De Niro’s trash period may have started in the early 1990s, with less-than-focused performances in “Night and the City” and “Backdraft.” But there were indications as early as 1988’s deadly comedy, “We’re No Angels,” that he was perhaps accepting too many dim vehicles and walking through his assignments.

He shifted in the opposite direction in “This Boy’s Life,” overplaying his role as the wretched stepfather of Leonardo DiCaprio, and he devoured the scenery as the monster in Kenneth Branagh’s ill-fated “Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.” He can still get by in hoodlum roles (“Ronin,” “Jackie Brown”), but the old juice isn’t there.

In one of his better later movies, “Wag the Dog,” he plays straight man to Dustin Hoffman’s hilariously demented Hollywood producer. There’s nothing wrong with what De Niro does with the role, but there’s also little that’s distinctive about it. You don’t go to see “Wag the Dog” because it’s a De Niro movie, and that’s a shame.

Knowing when it's time to say, ‘No’
Like Al Pacino and Gene Hackman and Michael Caine, De Niro now seems willing to sign up for anything, eager to take the paycheck and run. But every so often Caine makes up for it with a “Quiet American,” or Hackman wins a second Oscar for “Unforgiven,” or Pacino makes an unforgettable Roy Cohn in “Angels in America.”

De Niro, alas, is now reduced to rehashing a one-note comic-villain role and providing the voice for a lame cartoon version of his earlier work. Of course, there’s always more on his schedule, and we can hope for the best with his early-2005 remake of a classic: Thorton Wilder’s “The Bridge of San Luis Rey.”

If he had stopped making movies 10 years ago, De Niro would be regarded as one of our greats. He still is, but you now have to place an asterisk by such claims. Brilliant as his early-to-middle-career remains, it's not a reliable indicator of what's to come.

MORE FROM MOVIE OPINIONS

Test Pattern: Departed stars we still miss

Test Pattern: Departed stars we still miss Test Pattern: Ben Stiller’s second chance The baseball movie All-Stars Brendan Fraser: Invisible action hero Test Pattern: Cage fighting, $1 beer and ... Bruno! Test Pattern: 'WALL-E's' weight problem Movie characters we hate loving and love hating Test Pattern: Buying into Batman hype Test Pattern: Actors worth paying to see Test Pattern: Is Mike Myers the antifunny?   Add Movie opinions headlines to your news reader: