The Spanish actor Javier Bardem has scored some of his biggest commercial successes playing psychos in movies like the Bond film Skyfall and the Coen brothers' No Country for Old Men (for which he won an Oscar with his portrayal of the dead-eyed hitman Anton Chigurh).
But as the scion of a venerable Spanish theatrical family, Bardem has broader expressive resources to draw from as well, among them a winning touch with comedy, which he demonstrated as the love-struck pickup artist in Woody Allen's Vicky Cristina Barcelona. Now, in one of his subtlest performances, in one of his best films, he is wonderfully funny puncturing the low-hanging balloons of upper-class moral pretensions. The Good Boss isn't a belly-laugh comedy, but its humor is sharply on-target, and its story builds beautifully to a classically gratifying conclusion.
