In ‘Fallout,’ Justin Theroux Reminds Us He’s One of Our Best Corporate Villains
Justin Theroux has a rangier CV than you typically see for an actor of his handsomeness. Of course he’s at home in prestige projects like the John Adams miniseries or the Ruth Bader Ginsburg biopic On The Basis Of Sex. His friendships with alt-comedy superstars like Amy Sedaris and The State means he’ll pop up in the Strangers With Candy movie or play a charismatic commune-dweller in Wanderlust. He’s also a welcome presence in genre-crossing experiments like Netflix’s Maniac or HBO’s The White House Plumbers. Yet across his impressively varied work, one specialty has emerged: capturing the essence of an archetypal business sicko, pinpointed to the era Theroux is playing him—or, in one case, writing him.
A quarter-century ago, Mary Harron’s film adaptation of American Psycho brought the specific look and attitude of the ’80s finance demon to the screen by way of Patrick Bateman, played by Christian Bale. But one gag of the story is that any of the guys in Bateman’s orbit—including 28-year-old Justin Theroux’s ravenous, sharply suited Timothy Bryce—is probably just three decisions away from also picking up his secret hobby (serial murder).
Theroux’s starring role in the 2016 film The Girl On The Train made him a business sicko for the then-brewing MeToo moment. The official story on Rachel (Emily Blunt) is that she’s a recovering alcoholic; when her husband Tom (Theroux) brought her to a party thrown by his boss before the events of the movie, she made such a drunken scene that Tom was fired, contributing to Tom and Rachel’s eventual divorce. But if a spouse’s behavior at a function outside the corporate office seems like a flimsy pretext for an employee to be fired: good catch! In fact, Tom had planted these false memories in Rachel during the depths of her blackout drinking; Tom was actually fired for sexually harassing multiple co-workers. If Tom had faced real punishment for his misdeeds at work, maybe he wouldn’t have gotten the opportunity to commit further offenses, like murdering his mistress. Letting a business sicko get off too lightly can have consequences that…well, are entirely predictable, actually.
Netflix’s Running Point, which premiered last spring, cast Theroux as Cam Gordon, the president of the Los Angeles Waves, a team in the American Basketball League, Running Point’s fictionalized version of the NBA. Like the real Buss family, who have owned the Los Angeles Lakers since the mid-70s (current Lakers minority owner Jeanie Buss is an executive producer on Running Point), the Gordons were raised in the business of the team by their legendary, now-dead father Jack. Cam has coasted on his reputation as the “I got it” guy, according to his sister Isla (Kate Hudson). Then Cam crashes his car into a restaurant patio while high on crack, because he’s actually a new kind of business sicko the public is turning on: the failson heir pissing away his family legacy with his heedless excesses.
Theroux moonlights as a screenwriter, and in this capacity, he has shown he also has a special feel for the business sicko in the autumn of his life. His screenplay for Iron Man 2 includes archival footage of Howard Stark, a midcentury baron riding military contracts to massive profits and (sort of) raising future Iron Man Tony (Robert Downey Jr.).
