Idris Elba's 7 Best And 7 Worst Movies Ranked

If you're familiar with Idris Elba, then chances are you love his screen presence. It might be for his rich basso voice that appears in animated mega-hits like "Zootopia" and "The Jungle Book." It might be for his unnatural suaveness, which has kept him locked into a will-they-won't-they relationship with the role of James Bond for film after film. It might also be for his frequent roles in major blockbusters, such as his six stints as Thor's best friend Heimdall in the Marvel movies. Or, perhaps most likely, it could just be because Elba is an exceptionally skilled dramatic actor whose filmography is packed with movies that fans and critics alike have adored.

It isn't all sun and rainbow bridges in the British actor's career, however. Like any actor, no matter how talented they may be, Elba has attached his name to some, to put it diplomatically, less than successful projects. No matter how much he tends to personally excel, sometimes the movie elements beside him haven't quite risen up to meet him in quality or acclaim. In order to help you separate the cinematic beauties from the (sometimes literal) beasts in Idris Elba's filmography, here's a look at the seven best and seven worst movies ranked.

If there's one movie on this list, whether best or worst, whose rank should surprise no one, it's "Cats." From its first trailer, the feline film was lampooned across the internet, mainly due to its nightmare-inducing, uncanny-valley characters — not quite cats, not quite people, not even quite a mix of the two, just odd, shiny computer-generated monsters. Though many films defy expectations and prove the early haters wrong, "Cats" was not one of them. Despite coming with a built-in audience of fans of the original Andrew Lloyd Webber musical, neither they nor the critics were fond of the finished product, a cinematic experience more akin to torture than to entertainment.

In addition to its abysmal reviews, the train wreck that was "Cats" even failed to entice enough rubberneckers to make back its production budget, and ended up losing millions — largely claimed to be related to its subpar, inadvertently scary special effects. Idris Elba's role in the fiasco was as the villainous Macavity, a truly terrifying foe in the musical who in the movie, felt (forgive us) neutered. Even with Taylor Swift explaining how formidable he is for over five minutes, Macavity never comes across as anything but an ineffectual (forgive us again) scaredy cat.

You would be forgiven for forgetting that Idris Elba is a member of the Marvel movie two-timers' club. Unlike Chris Evans, whose dual roles — the Human Torch and Captain America — were as high profile as can be, Elba's two roles are almost the exact opposite. Although the Norse sentinel Heimdall is certainly famous enough, Elba's turn as the exposition-spewing monk Moreau in "Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance" is an understandably forgettable affair.

Oddly enough, both characters have almost identical golden contacts over Elba's natural brown eyes, but that is where the similarities end. Unlike Heimdall, whose valor is guarded by his grim stoicism, Moreau's character is decidedly more superficial, and so even Elba's exceptional skill isn't enough to make him memorable. Moreau is a monk whose most notable features are his alcoholism and untraceable accent. Lucky for Elba, "Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance" was an all-around flop among critics and fans, so any less-than-perfect portrayal on his part is largely confined to the dustbin of Marvel cinematic history — an average effort from Elba is hardly a matter of concern in a movie which by critic consensus is "plain trash."

It's not often that a movie with Sean Penn in a starring role is met with almost unanimous scorn from critics. The two-time Academy Award winner for best actor is generally considered one of the best actors of his era, and more often than not, an earnest Penn performance alone is enough to give a movie legs. But, as you may have guessed from its place in the "worst" category, "The Gunman" is a rare exception to Penn's Law, and even the added dramatic might of costars Javier Bardem and Idris Elba couldn't save it from bombing.

The movie, another in a long line of "retired hitman forced back into action by the ghosts of his sins" plots, failed to connect with audiences (unlike the ever-expanding "John Wick" franchise), which they voiced not just with their reviews but also their wallets — "The Gunman" failed to recoup much more than half its production budget. If critical consensus is to be believed, then the movie's main issue lies in its strategy of focusing on filming in beautiful locations instead of telling an original story. Having seen the movie, we're prepared to agree with the experts.

Adapting beloved book series is always a gamble, as is adapting dense fantasy sagas with expansive histories and lore. Stephen King's "The Dark Tower" series is both, and when Sony decided to take those twin gambles in 2017 by adapting elements from the series into a big-budget action film, they lost big. Despite a passable performance at the box office, few found the movie anything but a rushed, boring disservice to King's work. Even King himself, though he praised the efforts of the movie's writers and directors, was forced to admit that the adaptation was a failure. Idris Elba fans, however, have at least one reason to celebrate: The one aspect of the movie that actually worked was Elba's portrayal of the Gunslinger himself, Roland Deschain.

In review after review, Elba's name comes up as one of the movie's only bright spots, if not the only one at all. Time, which found the movie unimaginative and boring, still included that "Elba, elegant and understated, makes even the goofiest lines of dialogue believable." Likewise, Entertainment Weekly's review notes that "Elba makes that dull content sound stylish." But perhaps most direct of all is the headline to Deadline's review: "Stephen King Fans Can Be Thankful Idris Elba Is Here To Save The World — And The Movie."

There are a lot of things about the 2009 supernatural horror "The Unborn" that make the film seem like it should be a worthwhile watch. The concept is a cool one — a young woman investigates an apparent demon haunting, only to discover that it's the twin she killed in utero, now seeking to make its way into our world through any means necessary. Then there's the nice twist that the haunting is not due to the same stereotypical Christian demon from most films but a dybbuk out of Hebrew mythology. Then add in the fact that the priest and rabbi who try to save the young woman, Casey, are played by Gary Oldman and Idris Elba, respectively, and you have one stellar-sounding horror movie. Sadly, even the right ingredients don't always make a good meal, and "The Unborn" is almost as unanimously reviled as it gets, no matter the metric.

One of the film's biggest issues, as evidenced by how many cite it in their scathing reviews, is the narrative. Almost impressively, the plot of "The Unborn" is both overly-complex and completely predictable. The simple, fun idea of an angry unborn twin out for revenge is unnecessarily complicated by making twins run in Casey's family, establishing that one set of them ran afoul of the real-world Nazi scientist Josef Mangele, a confusing explanation about some twins needing to die and some needing to live, and the dybbuk haunting the family for generations — in the end, all these pieces form a poorly-shaped puzzle.

No film that puts Idris Elba opposite Taraji P. Henson should be anything but pure gold, and yet "No Good Deed" is more like a lump of coal — it's certainly not useless, but it's not pretty, either. Like coal, it was an adequate fuel source, powering a cinematic machine that earned back more than four times its production budget, but still looks dark, dirty, and is unlikely to be kept in anyone's display case.

The movie is meant as a thriller. In it, Henson's character makes the mistake of helping out a stranger and learning to regret it — the stranger is Elba and he's a career criminal with no conscience. Henson pays the price and proves the very obvious moral that no good deed goes unpunished, but there is little else to say about the movie. "No Good Deed" is slow-paced, boring, and unsurprising. Like always, Elba works well with what he's given (as does Henson), but he is given so little to work with that it hardly matters. If you need convincing, scroll through any number of reviews and see how many mention what a waste of its two stars that "No Good Deed" becomes.

It's not easy to land an 8% score on Rotten Tomatoes, nor is it easy to score a 36 on Metacritic, whose weighted scoring system tends to give even the worst movies a points bump. Nonetheless, the 2007 horror/mystery "The Reaping" managed both those dubious accomplishments. Heck, even horror fans, an unusually devoted and passionate group, couldn't find it in their hearts to grant "The Reaping" user scores beyond the middling. With two-time Academy Award winner Hillary Swank leading the movie, backed up by talents such as Idris Elba and Stephen Rea, you have to wonder how the movie ended up so terrible. Well, wonder no more, because the near-universal consensus is that what makes "The Reaping" so awful is... essentially every part of it.

The premise of the film is neat enough — Swank and Elba are basically ecclesiastical versions of Mulder and Scully, traveling the country, investigating claims of miracles for any potential truth. But the pair never encounter any cases even remotely interesting enough to keep the film alive, and even if they did, nothing about the film's writing or direction suggests that they would be able to do anything with it. As Empire put it, "The Reaping" is simply "an unholy mess."