In many ways, Robert Pattinson has done a Kanye West, Radiohead or U2 - and blown up a very successful career with a move so extraordinary and austere that it leaves casual fans either baffled or furious.

Those acts, respectively, released Yeezus, Kid A and Achtung Baby which, in the process, thwarted the label moneymen who wanted more of the same big hits and less, y’know, art.

Former Twilight star Pattinson has done the same. He came into our lives as a bloke in Harry Potter and, then, as the main vampire in Twilight. If he had wanted, that could have been his life for the next decade or two. An incredibly hot young actor playing heartthrob roles in films seen by a fanbase who like incredibly hot young actors playing heartthrob roles.

But, when his breakthrough undead series finally died, he veered dramatically away from the blockbusters he’d found his feet on, and took a series of desperately odd film parts instead.

First, there was Cosmopolis, an underrated David Cronenberg film in which Pattinson rode a limo around a Manhattan collapsing in equality riots, while having sex with Juliette Binoche and making sure his prostate got checked. It showed he could deal with issues.

Then came Maps to the Stars, in which Pattinson drove a limo around LA and, yes, used it to for sex with Julianne Moore. Granted, it did not show range, but did confirm remarkable dexterity in a moving vehicle.

Soon after that came The Rover, in which he played a vulnerable young man being taken for a ride in a post-apocalyptic Australia. It showed he could deal with being extremely strange.

Then came A Childhood of a Leader and The Lost City of Z - both as far away from Twilight as dawn - but all of the above were just practice really, for what is coming next week - Good Time. Which, simply, sees the greatest Pattinson performance yet, and very possibly the best performance of the year too.

In Good Time, he plays Connie - brother to a mentally deficient brother, Nick, who is arrested after the pair bungle a bank job. Connie is irresponsible. He should never had led his brother into that.

But he also cares for him and as the film - directed by the cult Safdie brothers - unfolds, Pattinson manages to somehow be sympathetic, hideous, idiotic, smart, hateful, likeable, pathetic, brave, heroic and feeble. The style is scuzzy and distressed, very 1970s, while much of what happens is so out there it actually becomes funny.

And anchoring it all is Pattinson.

There will be challengers this year at the Academy Awards, namely, Armie Hammer in Call Me By Your Name and Tom Hanks in A Film That Tom Hanks Will Be In (okay, The Paper), but as male performances go, nothing has gripped me more this year than Pattinsonin Good Time. It isn’t only the personal revolution he has been through. It’s more the undeniable skill.

He decided something a few years ago, which was to make a legacy for himself and be an interesting performer, rather than just a poster for a studio. Dozens of more respected names who happily take superhero dollar should follow his lead and, for that reason - and all the roles, especially Good Time, frothed over above - he deserves the Oscar for Best Actor in 2018.

And if you find that funny, that'll be because you haven’t seen the film yet.

Good Time is released November 17

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