It’s difficult to pinpoint the exact moment that Mike Faist becomes a movie star in Steven Spielberg’s glorious “West Side Story,” if only because every moment the Tony nominee appears on the big screen seems all but lit with a giant sign flashing, “This guy is it!” Whatever it is, he has it, tearing into the key role of Jets leader Riff with a fresh intensity that handily dances the line between “terrifying” and “heartbreaking.”Faist is no stranger to turning seemingly supporting roles into his own, from originating the role of Connor Murphy in “Dear Evan Hansen” (that’s where that Tony nomination came from; the cast also earned a Grammy and Daytime Emmy for work related to the Broadway musical) to burning up the small screen as teen cowboy Dodge in the Amazon series “Panic,” but there’s something distinctly different about his work as Riff.
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