Alternate Best Supporting Actor 1999: Bryan Brown in Two Hands

Bryan Brown did not receive an Oscar nomination for portraying Pando in Two Hands.

Bryan Brown plays Pando the head local gangster, whom Jimmy (Heath Ledger) is attempting to get in the good graces of, though does anything but throughout the film. Brown's performance on the immediate surface seems to be right in the line of the mentor gangster characters. Of course Pando really isn't too much of a gangster, though seen by such as Jimmy, however Brown emphasizes this idea in his performance. This as even as we see him seemingly in his "might", Brown adds a bit of posturing in his manner of calling Jimmy for a job. Brown showing a man who certainly believes in his own power, though perhaps isn't so much if you scratch the surface at all. Brown emphasizes this furthermore as we see him in his place with his men, where he plays board games, rather than any typical gangster fair. Brown's portrayal of this though is just with the slightest bit of intimidation, as lightly as possible, and really not far off from a standard boss rather than a legitimate gangster. Brown portrays a rather casual manner, that effectively borders at first between a man just comfortable in his space, as questionable as that is, but also perhaps too comfortable in perhaps just being a layabout going in for easy money. The latter perhaps becoming the truth the more we get to see of Jimmy. After Jimmy accidentally fails his first mission to deliver 10,000 dollars, we begin to see the bad side of Pando. Although again Brown is hilarious by still keeping the same manner as really essentially just a lazy man, as he casually discusses needing to kill Jimmy with the same manner as he speaks to one of his kids.

Brown is terrific in that he does create a slight menace merely in that casual discussion of "doing" a guy, while still at the same time slowly revealing that Pando is far less than Jimmy had thought of him in more ways than one. What I like most of Brown's performance though that in the technically pathetic nature he brings out of Pando, he also does reveal a bit of humanity, even if misspent in a way. This in his delivery of treating Jimmy's girlfriend, even as he intends to murder Jimmy, with the absolute courtesy and even a bit of sadness at the whole thing. He emphasizes this all the better as he and his crew take Jimmy to be killed. This where Jimmy offers a real alternate, Brown expression of a real fear and worry, as though he may being doing the wrong thing. Brown in a sense portrays both how at the same time he's both a terrible gangster and human being, even though he is attempting to be both. That sequence opens the film, however we eventual return to it into a scene of wonderful dark comedy as Pando and his crew fail to kill Jimmy due to having only a corroded gun to use. Brown is hilarious in his delivery of his frustrations as he questions his men, again being so earnest in his concentration while also so lacking in any real menace. Brown portraying a man trying and really failing even to be a proper, non-gangster boss.The final nail of this though is in Brown's final scene where Jimmy comes back, with the money. This with Pando initially misunderstanding as an attack, and the all too weak delivery Brown offers as he tries to instruct his men to kill Jimmy before he pulls out the money. Brown's wonderful in the shift to overly accommodating in praising Jimmy for doing a job well done, and again the failure of the act is what makes Brown's performance works so well. This as we see nothing but a fool pretending to be so far more than he is, which is only confirmed when he finally has a gun in his face, and Brown shows only but petrified fear in his "cool" gangster. This all being one wonderful long act of Brown portraying his mob boss who the more we see of him, it all becomes an obvious act by Pando himself to be a mob boss.