‘The Actor’ Review: ‘Anomalisa’ Co-Director’s Muddled Donald E. Westlake Adaptation Loses the Plot
variety.comRyan Swen It can be difficult to step out of the shadow of a creative collaborator, which Duke Johnson does fitfully with “The Actor,” his first live-action theatrical feature.
Though Johnson has had a steady career for close to two decades, principally in stop-motion animation for television, he is perhaps best known for co-directing “Anomalisa” with Charlie Kaufman.
A full decade later, Kaufman (who serves as an executive producer on “The Actor”) still has a marked influence on Johnson’s solo directorial debut, though it is awkwardly grafted onto a noir-inflected tale — based on the novel “Memory” by Donald E.
Westlake — of a man recovering from amnesia and attempting to rediscover who he is. That man is Paul Cole (André Holland), a member of a New York City theater troupe on the last leg of a Midwest tour.
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