From “Goonies’” Brand to the Mad Titan Thanos: a Spotlight on Actor Josh Brolin

With a career that spans from 1985 through present, actor Josh Brolin has showed his hand at playing a wide variety of roles. Son to actor James Brolin and a Texas-born wildlife activist, he was born in 1968 in Santa Monica, California. According to IMDb, Brolin, the son of two actors, was not immediately drawn to the field, but became hooked shortly after playing Stanley in “A Streetcar Named Desire” during his junior year. His first big screen role was, in fact, the iconic “The Goonies,” playing a character named Brand. But we’ll delve more into that below as we explore six of Brolin’s films our readers cited as his best performances. 

Brolin first caught my attention in the 2010 sequel “Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps” playing a billionaire tycoon named Bretton James. Brolin has that dynamic, pointed, yet powerful delivery that makes his characters – whether major or minor – resonate with the audience and stick with you after the film. 

He received tremendous accolades for his portrayal of George W. Bush in the 2008 film “W” – winning ‘Actor of the Year’ at the Hollywood Film Awards. Brolin has been nominated for 49 awards, one of them an Oscar for ‘Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role’ for his portrayal of Dan White in Gus Van Sant’s “Milk.” ‘Supporting’ and ‘Best Actor’ nods from a plethora of other award festivals show Brolin’s intense screen presence and likability. He recently wooed audiences with villainous roles in “Avengers: Infinity War” and “Deadpool 2” respectfully. 

Below we examine six of Brolin’s most captivating performances according to our readers from a recent online poll. We look forward to your thoughts in the comment section below. 

1. “The Goonies” – ‘Brand’ (1985)

“The Goonies”—a story of group of ragtag kids who set out to find a pirate’s treasure to save their home from foreclosure – has become a cult classic that has stood the test of time. Brolin, who played the character ‘Brandon’ in the film himself warmly remembers the experience during an interview with Conan O’Brien in 2012. Brolin also reminisces that he—17 at the time—almost ruined the keystone scene where The Goonies finally discover the pirate ship (which write Steven Speilberg had purposefully kept hidden from the cast to garner unique reactions) with an ill-timed f-bomb. 

The movie, filmed on a budget of $19M went on to make over $61M domestically, and has earned a spot in the National Film Preservation Board in 2017. States Brolin in a 2018 interview with Esquire on being so well known for the flexing Brand on “The Goonies:” “I love it now but there were the struggling career years when I hated it… a good 20 years.”

Brolin discusses his role in “The Goonies” below:

2. “No Country for Old Men” – Llewelyn Moss (2007) 

The Coen Brothers’ “No Country For Old Men” made $74 million domestically and won 4 Oscars (‘Best Motion Picture,’ ‘Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role – Javier Bardem,’ ‘Best Achievement in Directing,’ and ‘Best Writing, Adapted Screenplay’). 

Brolin plays a character named Llewelyn Moss, one-third of a plot contrived by the Cohen Brothers, creating an intriguing and intense film that has been compared critically to “Fargo,” for it’s setting, themes, and last impressions. Wrote Roger Ebert about the film, “This movie is a masterful evocation of time, place, character, moral choices, immoral certainties, human nature and fate.” Brolin acts on par with Bardem, who would go on to play sinister baddies in future films such as “Skyfall” and “Mother!” 

See Brolin in a intense scene from the movie here:

3. “American Gangster” – Detective Trupo (2007)

“It literally takes all of thirty seconds to be tossed into the inferno of violence that is “American Gangster.” The 2007 Ridley Scott film, based on real life hoodlum Frank Lucas, manages to tell a dramatic story with the excitement and flare not seen in a biographical piece since “Goodfellas,” writes The Movie Buff critic Matt DeCristo. 

The crime drama was nominated for two Oscars—one for ‘Best Performance by an actress in a Supporting Role,’ Ruby Dee, and another for ‘Best Achievement in Art Direction.’ While the film centered on the criminal Frank Lucas and the performances of Denzel Washington and Russel Crowe, Brolin’s crooked Detective Trupo leaves impressions. 

You can tell that Brolin—who plays a plethora of characters with shady undertones or less than moral modus operandi—loves acting, and has a deference for both the trade and the directors he works for. In an interview with www.interviewmagazine.com, Brolin is mentioned to have starred in recent films that have been helmed by directors considered the best of our generation – the Coen brothers, Gus Van Sant, Oliver Stone. Brolin was quick to interject the addition of Ridley Scott, who directed “American Gangster.” 

Click below to watch a clip of him from the film. 

4. “Sicario” – Matt Graver (2015)

“Sicario,” which deals with an idealistic FBI agent (Emily Blunt) getting drawn into the drug war along the Mexico/US border, presents one of my favorite roles by Brolin in that of Matt Graver. He’s sandwiched between Blunt, who represents the law, and Benecio Del Toro, a Colombian liaison to Mexico, and pulls off the balancing act of man who knows you have to bend the rules to get things done, and has made peace with that a long time ago. 

Brolin, teamed up with “Prisoners” director Dennis Villaneueve in the making of “Sicario;” and given Vellanueve’s previous success, the tone and reach of the film are apropos. Still, Brolin remarks in a recent Collider interview at his pleasant surprise at the film’s success after watching the screening, though he wasn’t as initially sure of the film (as he now readies for a sequel) as he is now: “When I saw [Sicario], I said, ‘This is a really fucking good movie.’ When I finished the movie, I thought it was going to be OK. I had seen Denis’s movies. I knew he was a great director, but not everybody’s perfect and not everybody can put a good movie together no matter what their intentions are, but when I saw Sicario I didn’t know what happened. I was like, ‘I know we accomplished a good movie, but why don’t I remember this?”

Brolin rationalizes his role in the war on drugs in this following clip from the film: 

5. “Milk” – Dan White (2008)

“Milk”—which won two Oscars for ‘Best Performance by an Actor in a Lead Role’ (Sean Penn as Harvey Milk) and ‘Best Writing, Original Screenplay’—would be a unlikely and courageous film for Brolin to take on, as he plays Dan White, a city official who shot and killed both Harvey Milk and San Fransisco Mayor George Moscone after resigning and being refused to regain his position later when he changed his mind. 

In an interview with Screen Slam, Brolin discusses playing this difficult character, and manages to shed light on what he thought his character was going through at the time. “I think it’s human frustration,” Brolin states of White, a Catholic, white man that lacked the political clairvoyance to see that the gay movement was not a strike at him and failed to see that he would be given a chance to have his voice at a later time. “I do understand, on the human level, him wanting to embrace the only power that he could.” 

Watch Brolin in “Milk” below:

6. “Avengers: Infinity War” – Thanos (2018)

Seeing as Brolin got his start in Hollywood with the cult favorite “The Goonies,” it’s fitting that he got the chance to follow up some of his more layered characters by playing the outright villain in the mega blockbuster: “Avengers: Infinity War” (which has grossed over $700 million to date).

That’s not to say that Brolin doesn’t get the chance to shine, or bring his classic “grey area” villain to the table. Thanos is a alien giant from Titan who makes it his mission to acquire a number of ‘Infinity Stones’ that will enable him to snap his fingers and end half the life in the universe, which is massively overpopulated. And while in reality Earth faces similar critical issues concerning a fast growing population and finite resources, you’d hardly find many to agree with Thanos’ ‘solution.’ But Brolin takes a character ensconced completely in CGI and, sandwiched amongst Marvel heroes that have been assembled for 10 years, makes us remember him. 

Brolin, admittedly not comic savvy, discussed his pleasure with playing Thanos, which he preferred over playing Cable in “Deadpool 2” in a Total Film Magazine interview: “Look, I really like doing Cable, and it’s practical. But I think if I was to have a preference, it’d be Thanos, just because my expectation was pretty low, given that I just thought I was a prop. And it was quite the opposite, having seen enough of the movie and realized how cutting edge this technical process is, y’know? I was watching me. I was watching every twitch, every blink. I was watching my eyes. My actions. I was living through my intentions. At the beginning, before I said yes, I called Mark Ruffalo and I said, ‘What do you think of this?’ He was like, ‘It’s going to be really uncomfortable in the beginning, and then you see the movie, and you’ll just be absolutely blown away by the stuff you were doing.’ And that was then. They made huge leaps and bounds in mo-cap territory since then. There’s nothing not authentic about it.”

You can check out a Thanos-themed trailer for “Avengers: Infinity War” below: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jdv2nCO3Eqg

Don’t forget to check out Josh Brolin in “Sicario: Day of the Soldado,” due for release this month.

**Lead photo of Josh Brolin from the cover of “Men’s Journal”