Remembering James Caan: He Played Hotheads and Roughnecks, Brilliantly Exposing Their Humanity
variety.comOwen Gleiberman Chief Film CriticIt in no way shortchanges the brilliance of James Caan, who died Wednesday at 82, to point out that he had a special gift for playing insensitive men.
He was a gruff, tough, raging, muscular actor, with a ramrod physicality and an imposing look: the wiry curls of brownish-blond hair, the handsome planed face that seemed carved out of granite, the mouth set in a scowl that was a challenge and often a threat. (You got the feeling that even his brain knew how to bench-press.) In “The Godfather,” the movie that not only established him as a great actor but marked him as a mythological presence, Caan played Santino “Sonny” Corleone, the lone hothead in a family of very cool criminals.
Don Vito was a courtly, soft-spoken manipulator, Michael a moody intellectual, Fredo a black-sheep nebbish, and Tom Hagen the adoptive sibling as passive bureaucrat.
But Sonny? He glared and shouted and busted balls. He blurted out what he thought, he slept with whomever he wanted, and when a rival sought to make an example of him, it wasn’t hard to light Sonny’s fuse.
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