What the F**k, Chris Pine is a Good Actor?!

It started like any number of other Friday nights: I’d read an excellent, favourable review of a movie I’d been looking forward to for some time (in this case Hell Or High Water); I picked out one of the four or five acceptable cinemas in London and I went there, bought a ticket and a beer, and then I sat down in the same seat I always sit in (3rd row, slightly to the left), ready to enjoy the shit out of a grizzled Jeff Bridges prowling across some vast Texan vistas. And I was ready and willing to enjoy this in spite of Chris Pine.

But then something happened. Something strange and aberrant and a little bit frightening.

I witnessed Chris Pine being a good actor.

I know, right? Like, the movie as a whole was fucking fantastic — organically plotted, beautifully shot, full of tension and pathos — but Chris Pine? Chris Pine didn’t ruin it.

He wasn’t even just serviceable. It wasn’t good in spite of him.

The sonofabitch had the gall, the unmitigated audacity to be really fucking good in it.

Which had me all:

It was a similar effect to when we all discovered that Charming Potato was actually good too. Remember that? The soul-searching that led to?

And I mean it’s not Pine’s fault. He makes a good Kirk. I just never thought he had it in him to do some serious heavy lifting.

But fuck me, he can, and he does. I dunno, maybe it’s just the mustache, but in Hell or High Water he is an image of a man coiled with rage and weighed down by regret.

In short: Good on you, Chris. Good on you.

Casting directors, cast this man in more awesome movies please.

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Jessie Wallace lives in London and plays music