What must it be like to play poker with Christoph Waltz? For all his charms, subtlety doesn’t seem to come naturally to the German actor.
Granted, Waltz was a revelation as the unnervingly charming Nazi colonel in Quentin Tarantino’s “Inglourious Basterds,” but in most of the roles that have followed, he’s tipped his hand with each exaggerated expression, working his elastic face like some kind of live-action cartoon character.That’s an especially odd approach to take in playing a con man, as he does in “Georgetown,” since no one in the real world would believe a man who telegraphs his true intentions quite so transparently.
But seeing as how this is also his directorial debut, signed under the name “C.
Waltz,” he can surround himself with similarly vaudevillian performances from otherwise excellent actors — including Vanessa Redgrave and Annette Bening — whose natural tendency has been to underplay their characters’ emotions.
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