...I don't think any of us can fully understand right now how this Ledger performance will be remembered. Think about it, this is a guy who, other than Brokeback Mountain, I'm Not There, and this, has not done a great deal of notable work. He's always been talented, and shown that spark, but I never in a million years thought Heath Ledger would be the Next Great Actor(c). It wasn't until Brokeback and his mumbling where people thought of him like that, and then for him to go out on this? Shit is like a rapper dying at his peak. We'll never know what he would've continued to do with his career, but he'll be remembered as one of the young great talents lost before their time forever. This film will cement his legacy. And when he wins the Oscar (YEP! I'm callin it now, sympathy plus brilliance equals gold man), this film will be that document folks go back to look at.

I was just so bewitched.

And we've seen a hundred folks play psychos. Good actors, too. That shit is not new under the sun. Everyone post-Hannibal has done the no-blinking, the speaking-softly, the quirky-characteristic murderer. It takes an extraordinary talent to make a psycho that doesn't make the audience think, "Wow, Heath is doing a great job! He looks really psychotic here!" Totally seamless work on display. Everyone else who plays a nutjob after this is gonna have a high fuckin watermark to try to climb to. Good luck, rest of the world, Heath Ledger ruined your chances at looking like a good villain.

And this comes a year after Anton Chigurh too! A year after I thought we'd seen the Classic Villain of this decade. These dudes are cut from the same cloth, brilliant, original portrayals of unpredictable, unstoppable forces of chaos.