Dan Aykroyd: 5 Awesome Performances & 5 That Sucked

1. Grocer - Grosse Pointe Blank (1997)

It's a great tragedy that Grosse Pointe Blank will probably never be considered in the great pantheon of Dan Aykroyd's best movies. A good deal of that probably comes down to the fact that it came outside of his most successful 1980s period, and that it's very much John Cusack's movie.

But Aykroyd is an absolute joy to watch in GBP - a magnificent bastard of a supervillain with a Terminator boxy hairstyle, Jack Nicholson eyebrows and an enormous capacity for pantomime malevolence. He's clearly also having a lot of fun too, revelling in spitting venom and being the most cartoonish element in an otherwise grounded story. And it's precisely because of his difference to Blank's attempted "normal" life that he works so well - it's almost like he's been ripped from a Shane Black movie.

Everything else in the film - the humanist existentialism, the characters, the writing, the wit - is all perfect, but it wouldn't work without a villain like Aykroyd to sell the enduring threat of Blank's dangerous job. And we owe a lot for that.

And now on to the ones that sucked...