Ranking Tom Hardy’s 10 Best Performances (By How Much You Can Understand Him)

3. This Means War (2012)

I can confidently say that this is the only list where This Means War will be ranked highly on a list of Tom Hardy's films. A traditional rom-com film like this is a strangely conservative blight on what has been one of the most exciting movie careers in recent memory. The fact that Hardy was also working with McG, who is a director less known for his ability to produce compelling performances out of actors than for his visually interesting schlock, indicates that Hardy might have received some fairly cynical advice from an agent at this stage of his career. He is never really convincing as a romantic leading man, and the plot of the film is incredibly contrived and unfunny. But given the banality of everything about this film it really does give Hardy the chance to be understood 100% clearly for one of the few times in his career. The dialogue is hackneyed, the interactions are forced so there is no real mistaking anything he says or any confusion over what his character is doing. It is simply a straightforward rom-com that hopefully Hardy got a nice pay cheque for doing. So in that regard, it's kind of nice to give props to one of the films that it's kind of disappointing he ever signed on for. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fn1XbToXuwo