Tom Hardy’s best and worst movies

The full trailer for Tom Hardy’s Venom was released this week, showing the actor’s transformation into a grotesque spider-like symbiote.

The portrayal further showcases the British actor’s remarkable range, from stoic war heros to deranged gangsters.

Here’s a look back at some of his best and worst films:

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Bronson (2008)

Although Hardy had made a name for himself as an acting force prior to 2008, it was arguably his manic, brutish performance in the prison biopic Bronson that put him on the map as an actor capable of carrying a picture.

Telling the remarkable true story of notorious British prisoner Charles Bronson (formerly Michael Peterson; now Charles Salvador), Bronson received positive reviews from critics, almost all of whom pointed to Hardy’s performance as a highlight.

Chris Chang of Film Comment Magazine said the movie “can barely contain Tom Hardy’s performance. It’s a Method turn so bloodily immersive it’s hard to imagine the actor getting his head straight afterwards.”

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011)

A spy drama dripping with detail and realism, the 2011 movie adaptation of John Le Carre’s Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy almost subverts the espionage genre entirely by doing away with overblown action and telling the puzzling, complex human story behind a Cold War hunt for a Soviet double agent.

“A deliberate, cerebral, grim and utterly absorbing film that makes covert operations appear as unsexy as the Bourne films made them seem fast-paced and thrilling,” the Miami Herald wrote of the film.

Hardy again shines here - although in a much smaller role - as Ricki Tarr, a British spy and staple of the Le Carre’s novels. The film was a critical and commercial success, racking up three Academy Award nominations and 12 Bafta nominations.

The Dark Knight Rises (2012)

The final instalment in director Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight Trilogy, and sequel to acclaimed The Dark Knight (2008), The Dark Knight Rises was one of the most anticipated films of the decade prior to its release.

Hardy was cast as Bane, a classic supervillain of the DC comic franchise whom Hardy gave a memorable spin by talking - through a mask - in a distinctive, terrifying growl.

The Dark Knight Rises was an enormous commercial success, raking in over $1bn (£716m) at the worldwide box office. It remains the 21st highest-grossing film of all time and the fifth-highest-grossing superhero film of all time.

Locke (2014)

An understated film with a modest budget and box office return, 2014’s Locke is one of the underappreciated gems of the actor’s back catalogue. The film is a daring and bold one-man show featuring Hardy as a construction foreman driving from Birmingham to London whose life is changed by a series of phone calls he receives on the journey.

“It was literally and figuratively impossible to take your eyes off Tom Hardy while watching writer-director Steven Knight’s boldly conceived real-time character study,” writes Variety, which named it as one of the “Most Underrated Movies of 2014”.

Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)

After Mad Max: Fury Road, an off-the-wall reboot of the Mad Max franchise, got stuck in development hell for almost 20 years, many thought the film series would never see the light of day.

Franchise creator George Miller finally realised his film in 2015 to broad critical acclaim.

With Hardy in the lead role, the film topped Metacritic’s tally of film critics year-end best film lists, with 58 critics naming it their best film of the year, while on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes it remains the highest-ranked action film of all time.

And as if that wasn’t enough, the film was nominated for ten Oscars, taking home six.

The Revenant (2015)

Those of a nervous disposition, look away now. The Revenant, directed by Mexican filmmaker Alejandro G. Inarritu, tells the relentless and often disgusting story of frontiersman Hugh Glass’s struggle for survival after being left for dead in the American Old West by his companions.

Although the film will widely be remembered as the one that saw Leonardo Di Caprio finally pick up his first Oscar after more than 20 years in the business, Hardy’s appearance as John Fitzgerald also received critical praise and earned the actor his first Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor.

Dunkirk (2017)

Sweeping, deeply moving and thoroughly British, Dunkirk saw Hardy again team up with The Dark Knight Rises director Christopher Nolan for a retelling of the daring evacuation of Allied soldiers from the beaches of northern France during the Second World War.

Despite featuring relatively little dialogue, with the help of stellar performances, the film fleshes out deep character narratives in the war-torn chaos, and Hardy again excels as an unruffled RAF fighter pilot who calmly patrols the skies to protect the soldiers below from aerial bombardment.

Another triumph for Nolan, Dunkirk racked up eight Oscar nominations, including Best Picture and Best Director.

And here are a few that fell short of the mark:

This Means War (2012)

Things took a brief and uncharacteristic turn for the worse for Hardy in 2012 as he starred in the clunky This Means War alongside Chris Pine and Reese Witherspoon. Barely scraping over the 25% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, the website’s summary of this attempt at a romantic comedy reads: “A career lowlight for all three of its likable stars, This Means War is loud, clumsily edited, and neither romantic nor funny.”

If that were not damning enough, Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times described the film as “an incompetent stupid action comedy” that was “so bad it’s nothing else but bad”.

Child 44 (2015)

After a string of hits in 2015, including Fury Road, Legend and The Revenant, Hardy fans can be forgiven for wishing to push mystery drama Child 44, released the same year, under the rug.

Loosely based on the case of Soviet serial killer Andrei Chikatilo, the film was “as tedious as a bottomless bowl of borscht”, said Entertainment Weekly. Nevertheless, The Guardian praised Hardy’s performance, saying that he brings his “robust, muscular presence to the role of Leo”.

Minotaur (2006)

One of Hardy’s earlier films was Minotaur, an action-adventure fantasy film that went straight to DVD and needs no critical appraisal. When questioned about it in 2012 even Hardy himself described it as a “pile of s***”.