The thing with Ving Rhames is the voice.
It’s how we’re first introduced to him in Pulp Fiction, where Quentin Tarantino shoots him initially from behind, the back of his head and its now iconic plaster (band-aid, if you’re American) the only visual reference we have for crime boss Marsellus Wallace, until then a phantom figure spoken about in anecdote and fear. While the back of his head tells us precious little, it’s the voice that fills the knowledge gap: his deep distinctive bass telling Bruce Willis to “Fuck Pride” while Al Green’s contradictory falsetto fills the room.
The voice is also how we’re introduced to Rhames in his first major feature role, directed by Paul Schrader in 1988’s Patty Hearst, a hard-to-find film worth seeking out for myriad reasons, chief among them Rhames’ dictatorial turn as the leader of the Symbionese Liberation Army who capture, radicalise, and then release the eponymous heiress. Schrader is in expressionistic Mishima mode at the start of the film, shooting in hazy montage while Rhames intones over the images, only half-seen in shadows, standing in doorways, lit just enough for us to know that he is absolutely jacked as beams of light bend around his sweat-streaked muscles.
As cinematic introductions go, it’s a moment that makes us sit up straight in our seats. By the time Schrader shoots him in the centre of a dark room punctured by bullet holes, Rhames is sermonising, modulating his voice like a great singer, his pronunciation odd and powerful, motored by an abnormal cadence that webs his words in rage and spit: pig becomes PEEI-g, America is Ameri-KAH. If the film sags in the middle, it’s because that’s when Rhames disappears, taking much of the electricity of the opening hour with him. This would become a common theme throughout his career.
Rhames played similar roles in the years leading up to Pulp Fiction: short, forceful appearances for iconoclastic directors, appearing for a couple of booming, bombastic scenes before ceding stage to the stars: Lt. Reilly in Brian De Palma’s Casualties of War (where Rhames’ offscreen voice is the first thing we hear); a haunted Vietnam vet in Jacob’s Ladder, and cop-killer Randolph in David Mamet’s Homicide. In Mamet’s film, Rhames is again shot mostly in darkness for his key scene, his voice reverberating around a dank cellar while he towers above a wounded Joe Mantegna.
Then came Pulp Fiction, which doesn’t need recapitulating here except to say that it’s strange it didn’t send Rhames stratospheric the way it did Sam Jackson or Uma Thurman. Or maybe it’s not. Despite his domineering presence – after his voice, the next thing to notice is just how impressively Rhames manipulates his body and the authority it demands; it’s no coincidence that he is often cast as a leader or paterfamilias of some sort – Rhames is a supporting player at heart, rarely receiving top billing and seemingly unbothered by it.
A true character actor who trained at Julliard, Rhames’ big moment of industry recognition came at the 1998 Golden Globes, where Rhames won Best Actor for his portrayal of Don King in the TV miniseries, Don King: Only in America. King was a rare lead role for Rhames, and his Best Actor nod is the only time he has ever won a major award for his art (he was nominated for an Emmy for the same role). In his acceptance speech, Rhames did something unusual: he gave the award to Jack Lemmon, saying “I feel like being an artist is about giving, and I’d like to give this to you.” Awards mean little, of course – Brain De Palma has never even been nominated for an Academy Award – but it’s noticeable that Rhames has only ever been honoured for his television work despite delivering a bevvy of supporting performances seemingly ripe for Oscar nominations.
After his Globes moment, Rhames continued to do what he had always done, and despite Pulp Fiction – and his old acquaintance with De Palma – getting him the Mission: Impossible gig that he still holds to this day, his work in the aftermath of Pulp was more of the same, including small turns for Soderbergh and Scorsese. The latter provided one of Rhames’ finest, the actor wild and charismatic as Marcus, a cigar-chomping Christian paramedic who brings some much-needed levity to Bringing Out the Dead, a profound study of grief and depression that finds time for Rhames to hold a hilarious and impromptu séance in order to try and bring a character called I.B. Bangin’ back to life.
Before those two performances, though, Rhames helmed John Singleton’s Rosewood, an underseen and important film that stands as the only example of the actor as a true lead. Here Rhames plays heroic as a war veteran (again) who inspires the titular town to self-defence against white invaders. But it’s another performance for Singleton that serves as the best precis of Rhames’ art, by turns swaggering, terrifying and tender.
That film is Baby Boy, where Rhames plays Melvin, the new boyfriend of the titular character’s mom. As with Pulp Fiction, Rhames enters the frame filmed from behind, his signature shaved head sweating. In place of the Pulp Fiction plaster, there’s a nasty scar, striped across his skin like fat through a steak. Jody (aka Baby Boy, played by Tyrese Gibson) marks Melvin as a thug, and gives him the requisite short thrift, setting the macho tension that carries through the film and into real life, too – Tyrese has said “I was not acting in Baby Boy…Ving Rhames definitely triggered the shit out of me. I don’t like [him] to this day.”
Despite allusions to his past as a gangster, Melvin is presented as reformed, and used accordingly as an imposing but comic figure at first: he goes from being dressed in an ostentatious wine-dark suit replete with purple fedora before a date, to having athletic, hilarious sex with Jody’s mom after it (“your gon’ give me a cavity”), to cooking breakfast naked but for socks and sliders the next morning. But then the pressure between him and his new stepson pops its lid, and Melvin has the anaconda of his arm around Jody’s neck, telling him what he used to do to boys like him in prison. As a sinister little coda to the chokehold, Rhames licks Tyrese’s bald head before letting him go, an inspired piece of actorly improvisation, funny and savage.
As noted throughout this piece, with Ving Rhames, it’s often the voice that directors highlight and audiences remember. And yet his best moment in Baby Boy – maybe in his whole career – is silent, during a wordless scene between Melvin and Jody, as Rhames communicates only with his eyes as he gracefully, insistently moves a gun away from a suicidal Jody’s face, wiping it in a rag as he backs out of the room. The look he gives Jody – the way that his deadly body slumps and softens to convey delicacy – tells him that they have reached something approaching amnesty, and, more touching still, that all is going to be okay through his support.
Rhames’ career has for a long time now been made up of the Mission: Impossible imprimatur and DTV work, to the point that Baby Boy, way back in 2001, might’ve been his last truly great performance. But that’s no matter. Stepping aside after doing something astonishing is just what Ving Rhames does.
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