Ralph Fiennes: 5 Awesome Performances And 5 That Sucked

And 5 That Sucked...

5. Joe - Land Of The Blind (2006)

We start off the incredibly tough list of the 5 Ralph Fiennes performances that sucked with this political satire from 2006, which crams everything that's ever been wrong with governments and revolutions into one exasperatingly schlocky endeavour. Fiennes plays Joe, a military man whose personality stretches the length of his name and who is - in more ways than one - a victim of the film's forced message. Guarding popular terrorist and intellectual John Thorne (Donald Sutherland, the only one who walks away from this project with his head held high), Joe sympathizes with the man's ideals and helps him overthrow the dictatorship, only to learn the hard way that the new regime under Thorne is worse than the last. Fiennes plays Joe in muted monotone, and in the rare moments of emotion he amplifies to the max. His performance is like a broken volume knob that can't stay balanced in the middle. As always with subpar performances, the fault stems from the screenplay and Land Of The Blind is no exception; written as a farce and with the production credits of a late night informercial, it's hard to say whether the film is a satire or a parody. Fiennes' forgettable Joe is much the same way, boasting a voice over that cures insomnia.