By his own admission, David Paymer is best known for his "nebbish" roles in films like City Slickers. "What can I say, I'm short," he said last week on the phone.
Well, fuggeddaboudit. Paymer makes Tony Soprano look like a boy scout as no-nonsense mob boss Jacob Malloy in the gritty new drama Line Of Fire. It debuts tomorrow night at 10 p.m. on Global and ABC in the NYPD Blue timeslot (that long-running series is going on hiatus for a few months).
Malloy runs his Richmond, Va., loan shark operation with ruthless efficiency. When a football player fails to throw a game -- costing the crime lord two hundred large -- Malloy is all heart. He doesn't order him killed, but he does tell him "you're done playing ball." After all, it's pretty hard to catch a pass after you've been lashed to a tree and goons have whacked away at your mitts with sledgehammers.
Later Malloy goes postal, repeatedly taking a tire iron to the head of a guy tied to a chair. This is one dude you do not want to let down.
The violence in the pilot of Line Of Fire, both implied and on-screen, is at an HBO level, on a par with The Sopranos. These are nasty people operating a dirty business.
Yet one of the things that drew Paymer to the role was the ambiguities in his character. Malloy grieves when one of his hit men goes down and counsels his troops like a father figure. He seems less bloodless, at times, than the FBI team on his tail.
They're led by Leslie Hope, the Nova Scotia native who, as Teri Bauer, was the surprise sacrifice in the cliffhanger to season one of 24. Hope's flinty, chain-smoking FBI boss Lisa Cohen is as complex and unforgiving -- and as astonishing -- as Paymer's performance as Malloy.
Creator Rod Lurie (The Contender) must be credited for casting against type in such a daring way. Payner says its a Lurie specialty, a way to challenge actors to new heights.
Paymer rises to the challenge and then some. This is a startling, star-making performance from a life-long character actor.
It's only after going back and checking Paymer's bio that some hint of Malloy emerges. Sure he goofed around with Billy Crystal in Mr. Saturday Night and two Slickers romps but he's also played ambiguous characters before in excellent films such as Quiz Show and State And Main.
He says he can find things to admire in Malloy, including his competitive edge and his dedication to his men. "If I didn't like him at all I probably couldn't play him," he says, giving full credit to Lurie for turning him loose.
There's a deep ensemble beyond Paymer and Hope. Leslie Bibb (Popular) plays a soft-spoken yet determined rookie agent out to avenge her late hubby, killed in the Pentagon attack of Sept. 11. Jeffrey D. Sams plays a gabby, goody-two-shoes agent. Anson Mount plays a trigger-happy debt collector who wins Malloy's confidence.
We've seen this good vs. evil story line before but Line Of Fire brings us original characters brought to life by terrific actors. Bottom line, worth watching just to see if Paymer and Hope can keep it up week after week.
