ONE HECK OF A MECHA
"Is this your first time -- with something like me?" One can imagine Jude Law saying this to almost everyone he takes to bed. In this case, he says it as Gigolo Joe, the synthetic stud who befriends the wee robot hero of "A.I.: Artificial Intelligence." Law refines the talent exhibited in "Wilde" for instantly becoming objectlike, eliminates his tendency to eye flutters; moreover, he (almost?) never blinks in the movie. His DVD commentary explains the concept: "Rather than make a false me, it was to make me false." Spielberg gets to something crucial about Law: He projects an idea of perfection.

Law is truly glamorous, in the etymological sense: He enchants. His spell -- the vital thrust of his pluck, his unassailable élan, his scintillation of eye, his superior wardrobe and makeup crews -- clouds up the mind. Flaws are dwarfed by sheer aplomb.

David Cronenberg (with "Existenz") goes deeper than Spielberg: He uses Law as something indeterminate, a fluctuation, a vibrating potentiality. He first establishes "P.R. nerd" Ted Pikel as a reluctant hero/straight man inadvertently caught up in the machinations of a sci-fi thriller. As the movie becomes a genre head-trip (richening, wonderfully, into a metaphysical comedy about storytelling), Pikel gains confidence in the plot, becomes the self-aware movie star of his own narrative. Law is exceptionally sly in expressing his modulations of self-consciousness, the constant measuring of slippage and gain in the game play of his own heroism. "I feel just like me!" Pikel marvels on his first trip into Existenz. (The movie makes a case for Law as an underestimated comedic actor.)

MINGHELLA THE MERCILESS
In "The Talented Mr. Ripley," Minghella unleashed all of Jude Law's ferocious sex appeal and terrifying confidence; in "Cold Mountain," he smothered these qualities under mangy facial hair and rhetorical (delusions of) grandeur. Both films earned the actor Oscar nominations. For the former, he deserved it.

As Dickie Greenleaf, expat black sheep of the Greenleaf shipping fortune, Jude Law cavorts through an imaginary Italian utopia. Bronzed, shirtless, in pink shorts and white sneakers, he darts over cobblestones on a Vespa, pausing to sip Campari and impregnate the locals. He is the consummate clotheshorse, peacock, cock tease, bon vivant, solipsist. A big prick too, as lady friend Marge (pouty Gwyneth Paltrow) explains. "The thing with Dickie, it's like the sun shines on you and it's glorious. And then he forgets you and it's very, very cold. When you have his attention you feel like the only person in the world. That's why everybody loves him."

Everybody loves Jude Law for what he puts into Dickie: velocity, glamour, enviable arrogance, poise supreme. An inspired line delivery: "I really want to move to the North." Law nails the useless scion who equates a change of villa with a momentous life decision.

"Cold Mountain": an arduous climb; the only movie in which Jude Law gets dirt under his fingernails. In this picaresque Civil War romance, he is everywhere upstaged by production values, helicopter shots, character actors. Early on, getting his woo on, Inman (Law) says to Ada (Kidman), "This doesn't come out right. If it were enough just to stand, without the words ..." Indeed. Law is best here not speaking at all, but simply in motion, striking poses, mutely Oscar-grubbing his way through the Southern landscape (Romania, actually). The reunion with Ada plays like two ice sculptures trying to make each other melt -- in a way more frigid and kitschy than Minghella intends. Is he the stuff of leading man-dom? The Academy thinks so, as does "Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow." (Jude Law was in that? All I remember is robots.)

THE M WORD
Confident in his megastardom, Law now takes on roles that "expose" his falseness, crack his surface. In "I Heart Huckabees" he is a soulless corporate suit who undergoes a spiritual strip down at the hands of David O. Russell's frenetically banal schema. In "Alfie," the worst gender-flipped episode of "Sex and the City" ever, he's a metrosexual monster in Margiela. His mush-headed deconstruction (by the director of "Baby Boom" and the writer of "Murphy Brown") reveals a man-boy cuddly-wuddly in a cable-knit cashmere hoodie. Aw. These are flimsy reckonings with a persona, one of the steeliest in contemporary movies.

BUT(T) BRILLIANT, THIS:
In Martin Scorsese's "The Aviator," Jude Law will play Errol Flynn.

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