Tim Roth: 5 Awesome Performances And 5 That Sucked

2. Hanussen - Invincible (2001)

Roger Ebert once surmised that pretty much everything Werner Herzog does is interesting, even when it fails or falls short of his best works. Invincible isn't quite the exception, but it doesn't exactly make a case for Ebert's rule, either. Tim Roth stands at the sort of centre of this strangely, oddly indulgent Herzog work, which pretty much succeeds only in its ability to confuse and enrage anybody who has seen it. The plot - based on a true story and set in Germany - concerns a man who rises to fame and fortune in the 1930s whilst the Nazis also rise to power. Roth plays a stage hypnotist in the movie - one with supposed "psychic gifts" - and offers up a very strange performance in the process. Watching him acting through Herzog's lens renders Roth as something of a oddity - his line deliveries throughout are questionably bizarre, his accent seems to change at random, and the expressions on his face don't ever seem to match up to what he's saying. It's like he's being... well, hypnotised. Whether the inherent weirdness of Hanussen's character was purposeful or not, it doesn't come across well.