Mark Wahlberg: 5 Awesome Performances And 5 That Sucked

4. Captain Leo Davidson - Planet of the Apes (2001)

Tim Burton's tawdry remake of the classic Planet of the Apes gets plenty of flak as it is; it's misguided, inane, boring (aside from Helena Bonham Carter and Michael Clarke Duncan's ape performances, anyway), and features one of the most ludicrously inept twist endings of any film ever made. Much like Charade, Wahlberg is tasked with living up to an extremely iconic role, this time of Charlton Heston's steely protagonist in the original, yet in pretty much every scene, he seems to wonder quite what he's doing in an over-stylised, under-written wastrel of a film like this. The facial expression above is pulled far too often throughout the flick, and really he's effortless against the film's tide of awfulness; he just plays a bland lead, presumably with the hope that we'll forget he was even in it. Kinda smart.
 
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Frequently sleep-deprived film addict and video game obsessive who spends more time than is healthy in darkened London screening rooms. Follow his twitter on @ShaunMunroFilm or e-mail him at shaneo632 [at] gmail.com.