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Iolanthe's Quotable Viggo
14 January 2018 14:20:06In 2012 Viggo played the small cameo part of 'Old Bull Lee' in On The Road but made a HUGE impact. Reading through the reviews recently I was struck again by how completely he inhabited the part and how much the critics loved his voice and every 'completely smoky' moment. While I'm sure Viggo would be horrified at the idea of 'stealing the show', we can enjoy the recognition of his work here.
…spare attention too for Viggo Mortensen. He gets two minutes in which to draw a spot-on caricature of William Burroughs.
Nigel Andrews
Financial Times
26 May 2012
In a brilliant cameo, Mortensen gets Burroughs's flat, wry voice exactly right as he denounces Moriarty as psychotic, exposes how the English translation of Voyage au bout de la nuit bowdlerises Céline's original, and hilariously demonstrates his version of Wilhelm Reich's ludicrous, once fashionable orgone boxes for the control of psychic energy.
Philip French
The Observer
14 October 2012
Show-stealer Viggo Mortensen channels William Burroughs with relish.
Tara Brady
The Irish Times
12 October 2012
Viggo Mortensen, priceless in Old Bull Lee / William Burroughs, highly intelligent and completely smoky.
Norbert Creutz
Le Temps
26 May 2012
Of those men, all the Beat icons, only Viggo Mortensen's William Burroughs makes a strong impression, albeit only fleetingly in a brief cameo. Unlike the others, Burroughs is a stay-at-home fellow at this point, but what a home (a crumbling abode in the Louisiana bayou) and what a fellow (by turns brilliantly incisive and demonstrably unhinged). Again, the balance inadvertently shifts – we'd rather forego the highway to stick with William and his William Tell act.
Rick Groen
Globe and Mail
18 January 2013
Mortensen's performance has the genuine, and ferocious, frisson of inhabitation that the biopic demands: alternately gun-crazy, butt naked and sharply observant.
Sophie Mayer
BFI
12 October 2012
Viggo Mortensen's Old Bull Lee is perfect in his grizzly, strung-out-on-heroin brand of isolation.
Julien Hawthorne
Colombia Spectator
13 January 2013
Viggo Mortensen… does an uncanny job of reproducing Burroughs' well-known voice, while capturing the whole of the character as well as (or better than) Peter Weller in "Naked Lunch." Very little of the book's humor comes across on screen, and Mortensen manages to provide what little there is.
Andy Klein
Glendale News
5 January 2013
… Viggo Mortensen amusingly nails William Burroughs' dry, paint-chip voice in the role of Old Bull Lee, a Burroughs-esque junkie already deep into violence and paranoia.
Owen Gleiberman's
Entertainment Weekly
23 May 2012
Viggo Mortensen makes things jump with his sepulchral growl as Old Bull Lee (William S. Burroughs)
Manohla Dargis
The New York Times
23 May 2012
One could watch an entire movie of Viggo Mortensen playing Bull, a sharp-dressed heroin addict who nods off with his child in his arms and strips off his clothes to get in an orgone accumulator he built in his backyard.
Jenni Miller
Hollywood.com
10 December 2012
Mortensen steals the show with a perfect Bill Burroughs drawl....
Jonathan Romney
The Independent
14 October 2012
…Viggo Mortensen is purely glorious playing a thinly-veiled William Burroughs, the trio's wise but wonky mentor.
Xan Brooks
The Guardian
23 May 2012
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