Leading Man with a Twist

Glen Powell has emerged as a bona fide movie star

High Wattage: Glen Powell in Twisters.

When I went to see Anyone But You over the holidays—least-common denominator rom-com fare for a family outing—I assumed I was going to see a Sydney Sweeney vehicle. Sweeney, the Euphoria and White Lotus star, has in recent months crossed into regular movie roles, and her rise is about as vertiginous as I expected. I figured the male lead in the movie would be a little like the guy in Taylor Swift’s “You Belong with Me” video: eye candy who would soon be forgotten. (His name is Lucas Till, by the way, and he seems to have done fine, with roles in the X-Men films, among others; not all Swift’s video paramours have done as well.) So Glen Powell was a pleasant surprise—proficient in the role and able to hold his own amid Sweeney’s wattage.

Earlier this summer, I went to see Hit Man (it’s on Netflix, but I saw it in a theater), where Powell teamed up with longtime auteur Richard Linklater for a project in which Powell got a screenwriting credit. For me, Linklater was the draw, as was a high-concept story about a college professor who moonlights as an undercover agent. But it was Powell who carried the day—a surprise (there’s that word again) in terms of pulling off a melancholy character whose irrepressible sense of adventure carries the day—and, of course, gets the girl.

Last weekend it was Twisters. I never actually saw the original (it’s one of those gaps, like Footloose or The Matrix, that remains a lacuna in my pop culture). This was a what-the-hell excursion in terms of being the best available option out there on Saturday night, and I went figuring/hoping that Powell would carry the day. Indeed he did, as a tornado wrangler with a heart of gold. (It was also interesting to see the versatile Lin-Manuel Miranda acolyte Anthony Ramos in an utterly conventional role; Daisy Edgar-Jones was, well, fine.) Twisters kept my attention for two hours on the strength of some really impressive CGI work—and Powell.

It's become something of a truism in our time that the age of movie stars is over. In part, that’s because movies themselves are a receding medium of popular culture in an age of instant gratification streaming and social media. (Once upon a time moviegoing was utterly dominant; before the era of television—now also in decline—the average American went to theaters multiple times a week.) In part, such technological factors reflect and accelerate the balkanization of our culture generally. And of course, there may come a time when our stars are AI avatars. But Powell—whose “instant” success is actually the product of decades of hustle—has got the magic of Sean Connery, Clint Eastwood, and Harrison Ford his combination of good looks and roguish likeability. His most obvious predecessor, of course, is Tom Cruise, who has become something of a mentor (they appeared together in two years ago in the Top-Gun sequel Maverick.)  Perhaps Powell’s most recent kin is Channing Tatum, still going strong in Fly Me to the Moon (which I reviewed recently, but which, unlike Twisters, is a box-office dud). In any event, it always cheers me to see archetypal male characters get reinvented and thrive, a cycle that dates back to the Natty Bumppo of Last of the Mohicans, which turns 200 next year. (The 1992 film version is on my all-time top ten.) Long may they wave—and smile.