Samuel L Jackson: 5 Awesome Performances And 5 That Sucked

1. Elijah Price - Unbreakable (2000)

Moving away from his more muscle-bound and alpha male roles that had dominated the mid to late 90s, and cut a swathe of cool through almost every project he was associated with, Jackson signed up to the greatest non-comic book superhero movie ever made, taking advantage of the few things M Night Shyamalan does well (fantastical story-telling, character-writing and high-concepts) and papering over the cracks of detail that would later open far more noticably in the director's later films with a performance that is both brilliantly still, and pricked with raw-nerve pain at the same time. The film might be suggested to belong to Bruce Willis, but in truth, Willis merely exists in that world, and mostly lets everything happen to him: he is a sponge, until he realises the implications of his powers, and his stripped (some might say lazy) performance works, rather satisfyingly, because of the dynamic built with Jackson opposite him. Jackson is almost unrecognisable - especially in the context of the films released around the same time - and his frailties, as well as the bristling desire to find a purpose mark out the performance as Jackson's best ever. And now to the performances that weren't quite so well-received...