Here’s a sentence you haven’t read in a while: John Travolta has made a masterpiece.
For 10 years — longer, if you don’t count his mesmerizing 2016 performance as Robert Shaprio in “American Crime Story” — one of cinema’s greatest living stars has been floundering in mindless, C-tier action films, playing Santa Claus in Capitol One ads, and making cameos in music videos with his good friend, Pitbull. To see Travolta’s latest films on your screen, you’d have to scroll into the dead zone of a streamer’s catalogue. There, you’d find a handful of selections where one of the last century’s most bankable faces resorts to playing a gun-toting sheriff or a gun-toting thief, often directed by the ex-boyfriend of a “Vanderpump Rules” star. Travolta’s recent output is a far cry from the days of “Pulp Fiction,” “Blow Out,” “Face/Off,” or any of the other two-word titles that proved the actor was more than just a high school greaser or disco dancer. (Though if his last great film role ended up being his Divine-channeling Edna Turnblad in 2007’s “Hairspray,” there would be no complaints from me.)
