Apple TV+'s 'Smoke' Is Hot Enough to Belong in Theaters
When was the last time you saw Taron Egerton in cinemas? The Welsh actor enjoyed a stratospheric breakout role in the smarmy, sexy spy thriller pastiche Kingsman: The Secret Service, and for the second half of the 2010s, his reaffirmed his confident and charismatic screen presence with projects of increasing size – an unlikely ski-jumping Olympian in Eddie the Eagle, returning as Eggsy for a Kingsman sequel, and a triumphant turn as Elton John in Rocketman. (We’re all going to forget that Robin Hood reboot ever happened.)
But since flirting with Oscar buzz in Dexter Fletcher’s soaring musical biopic (which absolutely lay groundwork for Better Man, the Robbie Williams monkey film), Egerton has been saving his sharp dramatic chops for the small screen, with streaming projects like Black Bird, Tetris, Carry-On, and now the arson crime drama Smoke.
We’re not here to speculate on the decisions or pressures on any young actor’s career choices (or lack thereof), but someone as cool, charismatic, and capable as Egerton deserves to be showcasing the heavy, repressed emotions of Dave Gudsen, his dirty cop character in Smoke, in theaters. This is a guy who excels when he’s upselling modest thriller scripts or flaunting his winning combination of cheekiness and intensity in tales of larger-than-life escapism; ten years into his career, why can we only see him on our laptops and smart TVs?
