'Raising Cain' and the underrated legacy of John Lithgow

In the special features for 10 Cloverfield Lane, the filmmakers gush about the fact that John Goodman is one of the few actors who can be both effortlessly sympathetic and menacing in the same performance. I would argue another character actor who has that unique ability is the woefully underrated John Lithgow.

Perhaps its his very expressive face -- by no means traditionally movie star handsome, but still very appealing.

Or, perhaps its his distinct voice (which he tried to disguise, badly, in his improbable villain role in Cliffhanger opposite Sylvester Stallone).

He's been so good for so long in everything he does, not just movies but stage and screen, that he's one of these actors I think we all just take for granted. At 70, he's been in the business a very long time, and his presence in a project assures a certain level of quality.

He's only been nominated for an Oscar once -- for his turn as a sweet man in a loveless marriage who has an affair with Debra Winger in Terms of Endearment -- and has never won. But I think he has a solid claim to being one of the best character actors of his generation.

Take his performance in Brian De Palma's 1992 film Raising Cain for instance. It's one of Lithgow's few name-above-the-title roles and he has a field day playing a character with split personalities, and a third character under heavy make-up who turns out to be the arch villain.

The movie is not one of De Palma's best. It's so improbable and full of gaping plots holes that it's best enjoyed as an exercise in pure style over substance, and on that level it works tremendously. One could see it as a bit of a middle finger to the critics who scoffed at this failed attempt to go more mainstream with his critically and commercially reviled adaptation of Tom Wolfe's The Bonfire of the Vanities.

John Lithgow in Raising Cain, it makes sense in context

And it's all the more watchable because of Lithgow's deliciously hammy performance. He's one of those actors who never phones it in. He has had some good collaborations with De Palma, my favorite of which is Blow Out (1981) where he plays a particularly cool and efficient killer whose perfectionism winds up having tragic results.

Another bravura turn can be seen in the anthology film Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983), where, in the movie's best segment (directed by Mad Max: Fury Road's George Miller), he plays an airplane passenger driven to delirium by a monster destroying the plane's engine, which only he seems to be able to see.

To audiences of my generation, he may be better known for playing the stick in the mud dad in Footloose, or the more genial patriarchs of Harry and the Hendersons and TV's 3rd Rock From the Sun, although his stock rose with the millennial crowd after a critically acclaimed stint on the cult hit Dexter.

Still, my favorite stuff he did was with De Palma. Although their partnership never reached De Niro-Scorsese level consistency, it's obvious that these two eccentric talents fed off each other in interesting and entertaining ways.

Hopefully, with the new, incredible documentary out now reviewing the director's career -- their work will finally earn the wider audience it deserves.