This story contains spoilers for several movies and TV shows in which Mark Ruffalo plays a cop or law-enforcement official.
Mark Ruffalo may now be most famous for playing the MCU's Incredible Hulk, but real Ruffalo heads know there's one onscreen archetype he's turned into a specialty: the dogged, possibly washed-up member of law enforcement.
Just a few months after fronting HBO’s buzzy hit crime series Task, for which he’ll likely earn an Emmy nomination, Ruffalo pinned on another badge for the heist thriller Crime 101, out this weekend. The new Amazon film is basically the Hulk hunting Thor, with Ruffalo and Chris Hemsworth playing antagonists on opposite sides of the law. Hemsworth's socially-awkward jewel thief is a different look for him, but Ruffalo's firmly in his bag as a scruffy police detective on the hunt for a notorious criminal.
As the Zodiac and Collateral star steps into another law-enforcement role, it felt like the appropriate time to investigate this versatile actor's broad and varied resumé of constabulary characters.
Mere months before his lauded performance in Kenneth Lonergan's You Can Count on Me put him on the map as a screen actor, Ruffalo kicked off the 21st century with a UPN (RIP!) series from Homicide: Life on the Street and Oz veteran Tom Fontana. The Beat followed the day-to-day of two NYPD street cops: Zane Marinelli (Ruffalo) and Mike Dorrigan (The Pitt season 2 guest star Derek Cecil). As if the names didn’t give it away: Dorrigan is the by-the-book partner and Ruffalo’s Zane is the wild card, a conflicted playboy with major daddy issues. Despite the show’s pedigree (and one of the all-time best Ruffalo character names), The Beat was cancelled after only six episodes. (Adding insult to injury, it got axed by UPN faster than the infamously terrible Jake Busey sitcom Shasta McNasty.)
Even if The Beat was over, Ruffalo clearly loved playing NYPD cops with Italian heritage, starring as the Irish-Italian Det. Giovanni A. Malloy in Jane Campion’s 2003 psychosexual thriller. Campion's film stars Meg Ryan as Frannie, an English teacher who becomes embroiled in a series of grisly murders; after she becomes involved with Malloy, one of the detectives investigating the case, she begins to believe he might be the killer. Ruffalo's character is one of too many red herrings in an atmospheric film undone by an unsatisfying conclusion, but he turns in one of his darkest performances here as a bad boy capable of both turning you on and killing you.
A year after his first appearance as the Hulk in The Avengers, Ruffalo turned up in the 2012 heist film Now You See Me as Dylan Rhodes, an FBI agent on the hunt for a group of world-class magicians known as “The Four Horsemen,†whose tricks have started including unbelievable thefts. As the Horsemen, Jesse Eisenberg, Woody Harrelson, Isla Fisher and Dave Franco get to have so much more fun than Ruffalo does. The most interesting thing about Rhodes is revealed at film’s end: he’s the son of a famous magician who died during an act, and he helped the Horseman as part of his revenge against those responsible for his father’s death. Ruffalo returned for the 2016 sequel, in which Rhodes’ true identity is outed, but the actor only appeared in last year’s Now You See Me: Now You Don't via a hologram cameo. Longevity and the parental twist ends up being just enough.
Crime 101 wants to be Heat. Crime 101 is not Heat. And yet, in a world where we don’t get stylish, star-studded heist movies anymore, Crime 101 is a welcomed and entertaining entry in the genre. Ruffalo is Det. Lou Lubesnick, a talented cop whose career hasn’t advanced because he doesn’t know how to play ball. And Lubesnick continues to rub the bosses wrong with his insistence that there’s a master criminal pulling off jobs along the 101 freeway, all while leaving no trace behind. As he gets closer and closer to identifying loner Mike Davis (Chris Hemsworth), Lubesnick is looking to solve his own life, after clearly having let himself go (Ruffalo is still rocking a bit of that extra Task weight). Once his wife leaves him, the detective starts attending yoga classes, and he immediately gets his groove back, in the form of romantic chemistry with a stunning, wealthy insurance broker, played by Halle Berry. Even if Ruffalo has tapped into this type of character before, catching an uncatchable thief and scoring Halle freaking Berry is something to brag about.
Okay, technically Ruffalo isn’t a lawman in Martin Scorsese’s underrated psychological thriller. But, for most of the film, we believe him to be U.S. Marshal Chuck Aule, who, in 1954, travels with his new partner, Teddy Daniels (Leonardo DiCaprio), to a hospital for the criminally insane in search of a missing patient. Ruffalo and DiCaprio are perfectly matched, and Ruffalo nails the aura of a ‘50s New England cop, mastering the accent and chain-smoking.
As the film progresses, Teddy becomes increasingly convinced of a grand conspiracy on the island. But then Scorsese pulls back the curtain: Teddy is really Andrew Laeddis, a former Marshal who is incarcerated at the hospital for killing his manic depressive wife after she drowned their children. Andrew became delusional, creating the Teddy identity, and the patient's disappearance was an elaborate roleplay from the hospital staff to hopefully snap him back to reality. Chuck is actually Dr. Lester Sheehan, and the administrators have decided that Andrew will be lobotomized if this plan hasn’t worked. In the chilling final scene, Dr. Sheehan approaches Andrew, who refers to him as “Chuck,†and so the decision is made to move forward with the procedure. Andrew then asks the doctor, “Which would be worse: to live as a monster, or die as a good man,†insinuating that he’s now the one putting on an act and knowingly going along with the lobotomy. While the game-changing twist alters Ruffalo’s role, he and the Chuck persona are good enough to break the rules for.
Perhaps no cop has been more influential on movies than Dave Toschi. The real-life Bay Area inspector inspired a pair of legendary characters: Steve McQueen’s Frank Bullitt in 1968’s Bullitt and Clint Eastwood’s Harry Callahan from the Dirty Harry franchise. But Ruffalo is the one who brought Toschi himself to the screen in David Fincher’s modern classic Zodiac. The unsolved hunt for the Zodiac Killer was Toschi’s most famous case, and the film follows Toschi—as well as cartoonist Robert Graysmith (Jake Gyllenhaal)—over a decade-long investigation that constantly arrives at dead ends. Ruffalo keeps showing that he can fit in as a cop in any era, and he heads to the ‘70s here with his bow tie and trench coat. And Ruffalo rounded out the character with a few touches, such speaking in a bit of a whispery voice and snacking on animal crackers. The unlikely partner dynamic between Ruffalo and Gyllenhaal gives both actors plenty to work with, but Ruffalo’s best scene might be one in which he does more watching than talking, as Toschi sizes up Arthur Leigh Allen, who, to this day, remains the prime suspect.
Ruffalo’s look is doing a lot of the heavy lifting here. As Det. Ray Fanning, he's rocking slicked-back hair, a goatee, and a single earring. And while Collateral isn't Heat either, it's still vintage Michael Mann—and one of three 2004 films that catapulted Ruffalo from acclaimed actor to bona fide movie star. (Incredible range: He showed up in Collateral, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and 13 Going on 30 in the same year.)
Collateral is a Tom Cruise and Jamie Foxx two-hander: cold-blooded hitman Vincent (Cruise) forces cab driver Max (Foxx) to shuttle him around L.A. for a night of kills. But Ruffalo takes advantage of every second he’s onscreen, beginning with a badass, guitar-rock-scored introduction. When he finally catches up to Vincent, Fanning is set to be the hero that Max needs…until Vincent suddenly, and stunningly, shoots him, when there's plenty of movie left. Fanning might have been collateral damage, but he and Ruffalo sure left an impression.
To be fair to the competition, it should be pointed out that Philadelphia-based FBI agent Tom Brandis gets seven hours as a main character to state his case, as opposed to the 120 minutes of supporting screen time that many of the others had. (Although, as Zane Marinelli and The Beat showed, more isn’t always better.) On the surface, you could also make the Heat comparisons with Task, but neither Brandis or trashman-turned-robber Robbie Prendergrast (Tom Pelphrey) are a cop or thief on the level of Al Pacino and Robert De Niro’s characters. What elevates creator Brad Ingelsby’s HBO crime series above the genre is the humanity of its two main figures.
Brandis isn’t put in charge of investigating a series of trap house robberies because he’s the best man for the job; he’s just a man. He’s currently dealing with unthinkable loss (his wife died after his son pushed her), which only further exacerbates the former priest’s crisis of faith. Washed-up feels too strong a descriptor, but Brandis has definitely seen better days, between a weight gain and his liquor-filled evenings. And in a show full of shootouts and motorcycle gangs, Ruffalo’s most striking moments are the quieter ones, whether it’s Brandis’ heartbreaking speech during his son’s hearing, or when Ruffalo and Pelphrey have their version of the Heat diner scene. Ruffalo and Task was such a hit that Brandis will get to pad his No. 1 ranking stats come season 2. Here’s hoping that it won’t be Ruffalo’s last shift as a cop.