Clive Owen loosens up for ‘The Boys are Back’

British actor Clive Owen, often described as a sex symbol, spent around a decade being talked up as the next James Bond. He has played plenty of spies - in Derailed and The International and the more light-hearted Duplicity. He even played agent 006 in the remake of The Pink Panther. But he lost out to Daniel Craig in the race to play the ultimate screen agent, 007.

This failing seems symptomatic of his acting career in general which has fallen short of expectations - until, perhaps, now.
 
Owen's latest film The Boys Are Back sees the 45-year-old Welsh actor shrug off his usual brooding tough-guy schtick for something more genuine and heart-felt. Some critics are tipping him for an Oscar nomination.
 
The Boys Are Back, directed by Scott Hicks (Shine), is based on the 2001 memoir of the same name by former parliamentary sketch-writer Simon Carr.
 
Owen plays Joe Warr, a British sports journalist now living in Australia after the death of his second wife from cancer. Joe is already struggling to bring up his six-year-old Artie when his 14-year-old Harry, his son from his first marriage, decides to leave England to come and live with them.
 
The memoir and film follow Joe's anarchic child-rearing style, which includes allowing his younger son to perch on the hood of his Land Rover while he speeds across the beach.
 
Reviews have been mixed – A O Scott of the New York Times found the film "painfully unconvincing" - but many have praised Owen's performance. Kirk Honeycutt of the Hollywood Reporter described Owen's turn as Joe as "his most honest, natural and beguiling" performance yet, while Rolling Stone magazine called it "a heartfelt, award-calibre performance... It's his core of toughness that makes the movie so funny, touching and vital."
 
It was a 1998 film, Croupier, which saw Clive Owen come to international attention and earn rave reviews in America. In a recent interview Owen spoke about how the film's producer Mike Kaplan, a former PR man for Stanley Kubrick, had championed the film in the United States – a gamble considering that the film ran for one week in Britain. "Everything I've done since then is because of Croupier," said Owen.
 
Now it seems that another high risk - playing against type - could pay off for Owen.

'The Boys Are Back' is released in the UK on Friday January 22.WHAT THE CRITICS ARE SAYING:
 
Jason Solomons, the Guardian:"Whenever men do the washing up in Hollywood films, it has to be in a comedy (Mr Mom, Daddy Day Care) while the death of a mother is usually the cue for violins (Stepmom), so it's rather refreshing to find a film that handles the subject without turning into a soup of sentimentality. It wouldn't surprise me to see Owen getting an Oscar nomination for The Boys Are Back."

Betsey Sharkey, the Los Angeles Times: "While Hicks does not reach the emotional resonance we saw in his eloquent 1996 Shine, which earned Geoffrey Rush an Oscar as a pianist suffering and recovering from a breakdown, he does expose a charming, softer side of Owen as Joe Warr that we too rarely see."

Dave Calhoun, Time Out: "Hicks is well served by an endearing Owen, whose performance must rank as one of his best, and some beautiful photography from rising Aussie Greig Fraser (Bright Star), whose landscape shots give us room to breathe away from domestic mayhem." (Verdict: 4/5 stars)

Dan Kois, the Washington Post: "Joe describes his parenting style as 'Just say yes'. By the end of The Boys Are Back, you will feel for Joe and his kids - but you might wish you'd just said no, instead." ·