I’ve been giving Colin Farrel’s Oz a lot of attention. I need to share some Michael Keaton VA Vandevere love!
This is the last role Keaton’s done where he makes the character far from his own voice and mannerisms. Since Dumbo he’s pretty much been doing roles that look and sound the same (Batman, and soon he’s going to play yet another assassin).
I just can’t get over Colin Farrell in this movie. He thoroughly becomes the character. Hate to say it, but he does it even more than Danny DeVito did in Batman Returns, in that his voice and mannerisms are so different from his own (DeVito’s voice was pretty much the same as his voice in Taxi).
Here’s DeVito’s impression of The Batman. (I love that he didn’t bother straightening the room behind him, and the fully stocked liquor cart in the background.)
“Oz” Cobblepot was never really that bad a guy. Thrown from a horse at age 18, his limp discouraged employers, though his kindness found him a loving, beautiful wife.
In order to support Annie and their daughter, Milly, Oz accepted work at the one place where his intimidating appearance was an asset: Dreamland, an exclusive nightclub for the filthy rich, owned by billionaire V.A. Vandevere. With a head for numbers and a showman through and through, soon Oz was the billionaire’s right-hand man.
Annie died from Covid in 2020. Numb with grief, Oz drowned himself in work.
Oz was well aware Dreamland was just a front for Vandevere’s criminal enterprises. He kept his mouth shut and sheltered Milly as well as he could. But in order to go to college, and determined to pay her own way, Milly insisted on working as a waitress at Dreamland..
V.A. noticed her. And she noticed him. Milly thought the father she dearly loved didn’t know they were “dating.” But Oz knew everything that happens in Dreamland.
Telling Milly outright to never see V.A. again would make her dig in her heels. But one evening during a thunderstorm, with business slow, Oz tries to convince Milly to leave work early. And he confronts her with her secret.
