The sky’s the limit for Jamie Foxx.
Last year, the ex-In Living Color comic went from being the butt of Booty Call jokes to becoming only the third African-American to walked off with an Oscar for Best Actor. A winner for Ray, a Best Supporting Actor nominee for Collateral, and a Golden Globe contender for the TV biopic Redemption, Foxx finally proved that his quiet and dignified portrayal of Ali corner man Drew ‘Bundini’ Brown was no fluke.
Now he’s hoping to soar even higher with Stealth.
OK, so director Rob Cohen’s turbo-charged but unintentionally hilarious showdown between man and machine–about a runaway experimental fighter jet that’s madder and badder than HAL 5000–hardly qualifies as a worthy successor to Ray and Collateral. But the white-hot Foxx should guarantee Stealth overcomes its many detects and become one of the summer’s last blasts at the box office. Accordingly, Stealth should land somewhere between late-summer sensations XXX’s $142.1 million and S.W.A.T.’s $116.9 million, rewarding Foxx with his biggest hit.
Had Foxx won his Oscar before the Stealth script fell into his hands, it’s doubtful he would climbed into the cockpit for such a stupendously silly and terribly predictable techno-thriller. He boarded Stealth in December 2003, long before he knew he would own 2004. At least by serving as wingman to leads Josh Lucas and Jessica Biel, Foxx disembarks Stealth almost with his deignity intact.
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Perhaps Foxx’s participation in Stealth stemmed from a burning desire to play action hero in another surefire summer smash from the director of The Fast and the Furious and XXX. After all, pre-Collateral, Foxx possessed nothing in the way of Bait to snag a sizeable audience. And 2004 initially showed little promise, with the intriguing ensemble drama Shade all but dumped on DVD and few paying any attention to Foxx Breakin’ All the Rules.
Ironically, though, Stealth now needs Foxx just as much as he needs Stealth.
Before Foxx’s Oscar win, Stealth flew under the radar as far as potential summer blockbusters go. In recent months, Sony’s wisely zeroed in on Foxx’s Top Gun-ish flyboy to ensure Stealth enjoys a successful takeoff.
Still, in the unlikely event Stealth crashes and burns, Foxx will have another opportunity next summer to establish himself as a man of action. He’s donning Ricardo Tubbs’ designer duds for Miami Vice (July 28, 2006), which costars Colin Farrell as Sonny Crocket.
Are audiences ready for a Miami Vice without those pioneer MTV cops, Don Johnson and Phillip Michael Hall? And will there still be any desire to see another film based on a classic TV show after this summer’s Bewitched and The Honeymooners? If not, this could this could be an embarrassment for Foxx on the scale of Eddie Murphy’s I Spy or Uma Thurman’s The Avengers.
It’s understandable why Foxx would transfer to Miami Vice. He’s reunited for the third time with his Ali and Collateral director Michael Mann, who produced the flashy and influential cop series. Mann extracted two of Foxx’s three finest pre-Ray performances (the third was as cocksure backup quarterback in Oliver Stone’s steroid-addled Any Given Sunday). However, Mann’s got a hard task ahead of him. Miami Vice stood as a perfect symbol of the greed-is-good agenda of the 1980s, and merely rehashing its coke-fueled glitz and glamour for today’s audiences won’t fly. If Mann can make Miami Vice feel fresh and contemporary, while retaining the original’s style and true grit, then Foxx won’t be left singing the smugglers’ blues.
But before Miami Vice, Foxx’s wisely involved himself in next year’s Oscar gold rush.
He’s cast in a pivotal role of a U.S. Marine sergeant in Jarhead (Nov. 4), purportedly a hard-hitting but darkly witty Gulf War-era epic. Directed by American Beauty’s Sam Mendes, Jarhead looks set to join Memoirs of a Geisha and Steven Spielberg’s untitled Munich Olympics drama as potential Oscar frontrunners.
For Foxx, it’s a good move to sandwich in such a prestige project–and once again challenge himself–between Stealth and Miami Vice.
Then he’ll try to persuade Ray fans to go on a date with his Dreamgirls, an adaptation of the Broadway musical to be directed by Chicago’s Bill Condon. The big-screen musical appears to be a viable genre again, so Foxx could enjoy a Chicago-like winner if audiences long to hear him burst into song again.
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If you want to see the Jamie Foxx of Collateral and Ray, wait until Jarhead. Otherwise, Foxx‘s decision to fly the unfriendly skies with Stealth could produce a sonic boom at the box office. And by taking on such diverse roles, Foxx is carefully distancing himself from the fatuous farces that he headlined between seasons of The Jamie Foxx Show. He’s already bested contemporaries Chris Rock and Martin Lawrence, and his In Living Color Colleague Jim Carrey, by making a credible and profitable transition from comedy to drama. And that means Foxx will–thankfully–never ever invite us out on another Booty Call. | |
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