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Bernie: Jack Black soars in Richard Linklater’s brilliant true-crime comedy
Actor is breathtakingly good as a sweet man who befriends a wealthy widow, with deadly results – backed up by Shirley MacLaine and Matthew McConaughey
Bernie is streaming in Australia on Stan. For more recommendations of what to stream in Australia, click hereTurns of phrase like “the role they were born to play” or “no actor could do it better” invariably sound a little twee, but by god they apply to Jack Black’s breathtakingly good performance in Bernie. Playing a Texan mortician in Richard Linklater’s 2011 film seems like the role Black’s entire career had been building towards, offering the actor, singer and comedian a semi-musical acting part that’s both boisterously loud and irresistibly sweet.
Bernie, which I haven’t stopped thinking about or periodically rewatching since it arrived more than decade ago, is a true crime comedy– an uncommon combination, given that true crime hardly screams “hilarity”. But there’s a strange brilliance in this shrewd and emotionally affecting production, for my money among the finest comedy films of the 21st century to date. At its core is an idea that seems rather perverse when distilled into a few words: what if a convicted killer, who really did do it, is actually a swell, big-hearted bloke?
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