Alternate Best Supporting Actor 2010: Results

5. Liu Kai-chi in The Stool Pigeon - Kai-chi gives an over the top performance that keeps his character as mostly a ridiculous caricature.

4. Michael Lonsdale in Of Gods and Men - Lonsdale gives a quietly haunting portrayal of a modest monk willing to face his inevitable demise.

Best Scene: The last supper. 

3. Armie Hammer in The Social Network - Hammer gives two great performances where he gives both a very entertaining portrayal of privilege, but also bothers to find proper nuance within characters while finding the differences between the two twins.

Best Scene: Meeting the president of Harvard. 

2. Ben Kingsley in Shutter Island - Kingsley gives a great performance where he manages to amplify the film's stylistic tone while actually bringing a surprising degree of depth towards the film's twist through the way he builds towards the revelation.

Best Scene: The Lighthouse. 

1. Taika Waititi in Boy - Good Prediction Luke, Tahmeed, Omar, RatedRStar, John Smith, and Matt Mustin. Waititi gives my favorite supporting performance of this year with his genuinely hilarious but also rather off-putting portrayal of a petulant father. He manages to find the complexity of his character with such ease never letting a single aspect of the role override his entire performance.

Best Scene: Demanding his coat back.

Updated Overall

Next Year: 1965 Lead

Alternate Best Supporting Actor 2010: Liu Kai-chi in The Stool Pigeon

Liu Kai-chi did not receive an Oscar nomination for portraying Jabber in The Stool Pigeon.

The Stool Pigeon is a thriller that follows a police inspector Lee (Nick Cheung) and his criminal driver informant Ghost. Although it is bolstered somewhat by a charismatic lead performance by Nicholas Tse as the driver it is bogged down by some rather awkward plotting.

Liu Kai-chi plays the previous titular stool pigeon before Tse takes up the job, and we first meet him in the film's opening where a sting is bungled. That leads Jabber on the wrong end of several machetes when the gangster he was working for becomes aware of his treachery. Liu kind of goes full on manic desperate fool, that you often see in a Hong Kong crime thriller, and it is perhaps a touch over the top. He becomes less sympathetic and more ridiculous in this early scene which is problematic because it is suppose to set up the guilt inspector Lee must suffer. Unfortunately that is made all the more underwhelming by Nick Cheung's bland performance. This is suppose to be an underlying and important plot point however I sort of forgot Liu was even in the film much of the time. He occasionally pops back up as now a deranged homeless man hiding from the criminals and constantly fearful for his life. Again Liu's performance is excessive, and it actually might have been somewhat forgivable if he was a little more subtle in his opening scene. His performance instead goes from an 11 to 11 so the change really doesn't leave any impression. Instead we get more of him reacting in an outrageous fashion to everything. Now he's over the top but not completely terrible at this. There are hints of some genuine emotion in there, but that is often diminished by just how much he oversells every one of his lines as well as all his facial expressions. He leaves nowhere for his character to go, and remains almost a cartoon the entire time. The role itself I do think had potential if there had been a degree of restraint as the idea of his character trying to see his wife again could have been moving. It fails though because of just how big he goes the entire time. There are at least some minor glimpses of a decent performance but for the most part Liu Kai-chi's performance makes Jabber nothing more than a forgettable caricature.

Alternate Best Supporting Actor 2010

And the Nominees Were Not:

Armie Hammer in The Social Network

Ben Kingsley in Shutter Island

Liu Kai Chi in The Stool Pigeon

Michael Lonsdale in Of Gods and Men

Taika Waititi in Boy