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There are easy parallels to draw between Robert Downey Jr. and Hugh Jackman's superheroic career paths. Both played a Marvel Comics hero (Iron Man and Wolverine, respectively, of course) for more than a decade, bowed out with a definitive conclusion ("Avengers: Endgame" and "Logan"), and seemed like they were stretching their acting legs... only to be lured back.
Downey Jr. won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor after playing Lewis Strauss in "Oppenheimer," just before it was announced Marvel Studios had recruited him to play Doctor Doom. Jackman, meanwhile, didn't even get an Oscar during his Wolverine hiatus — but he could have, if only the crime drama "Bad Education," which he starred in, hadn't premiered on HBO.
Directed by Cory Finley and written by Mike Makowsky, the film is based on a true story as reported by journalist Robert Kolker in the 2004 New York Magazine article, "The Bad Superintendent." Jackman's character, Dr. Frank Tassone, was the superintendent of Long Island community Roslyn's school district. In the early 2000s, it came out that Tassone and his assistant superintendent Pam Gluckin had embezzled millions of dollars.
"Bad Education" premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2019, and then HBO acquired the movie for $17.5 million. At the time, this was reported as a trade-off: a surer payday via streaming against any Oscar chances (since the movie wouldn't get the required theatrical distribution as a HBO film). Thus, Jackman has to settle for an Emmy nomination instead of an Oscar one.
Still, upon its premiere on HBO in April 2020, Jackman's performance was hailed as the movie's biggest selling point and possibly his greatest acting work yet. Even /Film's lukewarm "Bad Education" review at the time praised Jackman, and we've since ranked the movie among Jackman's best projects.
Read more: 30 Best Male Actors Of All Time, Ranked
Bad Education let Hugh Jackman play a bad guy
Robert Kolker introduced Frank Tassone as "the erudite, widely admired superintendent of the Roslyn, Long Island, school district" in "The Bad Superintendent." The film zeroes in on that characterization. Hugh Jackman plays Tassone as someone giving a performance himself. He's a dandy who meticulously takes care of his appearance and is never far from a mirror.
Jackman's natural movie star charisma and looks mean you buy him as the kind of beloved community leader who can work a room filled with hundreds of people or just one-to-one. Tassone is even a compelling flip on how he plays Wolverine; Logan is a grizzled a-hole who we still like because Jackman's charisma illuminates the good, tortured man buried deep down. Tassone is an all-smiles gentleman, loved by his students and their parents, but that's a heavier mask than any costume Wolverine has ever worn.
Moreover on the "performing" point, Frank is portrayed in the film as a closeted gay man. He defuses passes from interested single women by claiming to be a widower. (This is mostly true, though the real Frank Tassone was married to a woman who died young, whereas the movie can give you the impression that backstory was all fiction; the real Tassone call the film's handling of his sexuality "sordid.")
Speaking to the Daily Beast in 2020, Jackman discussed this theme, saying: "What the movie's about is appearances — who we are and the mask we put on." There's crucial irony, too, between how Frank has made Roslyn a top-rated school district yet also opened up such rot concealed in that reputation.
"For Frank, how he was perceived and judged by people on-site was very important, and he justified that as being a part of his job," Jackman continued.
How Bad Education lives up to its title
Frank Tassone's obsession with how he presents himself and his work making the district ranked so highly ties into what "Bad Education" has to say about the teaching profession: It's a service job. Actual education isn't what most parents want for their children, merely the appearance of one by good grades and college acceptance, and they treat those as the product of a transaction with the school.
Early in "Bad Education," a woman complains to Frank that her son isn't getting the grades she wants him to, as if that's the superintendent's problem to resolve. Frank's nice guy performance finally breaks late in the film, when, at the height of the scandal, she's once more sitting in his office. Hugh Jackman, playing a career's worth of suppressed irritation bubbling up, cuts loose that parents like her devalue teaching — he's not wrong, but is Frank Tassone the one to say this?
Frank and Pam Gluckin (an also excellent Allison Janney) discuss how they were first tempted to steal money due to a mix of all-too-real under-appreciation and working in the same social circles as people with way more money. They were working on Long Island, one of the pinnacles of wealthy U.S. suburbia. When Pam's embezzlement is exposed early in the film, Frank convinces the school board to cover it up. How? If a scandal gets out, both the school district's reputation and, eventually, property values will tank.
"Bad Education" won an Emmy for Outstanding Television Movie, while Jackman himself scored only a nomination for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie. Considering the Best Actor Oscar that year went to Joaquin Phoenix's controversial performance in "Joker," it stings even more that Jackman couldn't compete in the big leagues.
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Read the original article on SlashFilm.
