This thing for Steve is 17 years old, and when a thing like that is old enough to drive and get a part-time job at Target, it’s old enough to sit down with it and talk about how it was born. Now, Steve’s oeuvre is mostly small but notable roles in a bajillion things, but below are the few greatest ones that feature him up front, if not quite center.
Joy Ride (2001)
A quintessential Steve role—the goofy deadbeat older brother—which just happens to appear in a solidly entertaining road trip thriller that showcases Steve’s affable slackerness in the presence of the late Paul Walker. Both of them bare their bums in a memorably dark practical joke scene, and ya know, Steve is FIT, even compared to his teen heartthrob costar. But this movie is singular in that the DVD offers an uber-rare commentary track featuring Steve, who is doing little more than sipping his Starbucks, laughing at stuff that happened during filming in the desert, and making up sound effects until Leelee Sobieski takes over halfway through. Nothing against Leelee, but I could’ve done with Steve doing the entire thing. BONUS: Ted Levine’s voice as the mysteriously creepy trucker on the CB radio is just *chef’s kiss* perfection.
Sahara (2005)
My introduction to Steve came with an evening being dragged by my parents to go see this Clive Cussler adaptation, which is not my usual genre at all, but literally within minutes of Steve’s entrance--his plumber’s buttcrack on display as he fixes some machinery with Penelope Cruz’s assistance--I was sold. Actually, I saw an interview Steve did on Conan the day before and he was so damned adorable I was halfway convinced that Sahara might not be so bad after all. Turned out he had a sparkling rapport with even bigger hearthrob Matt McConaughey and some lizard part of my female brain was turned on by the unintentionally farcical masculinity on display throughout. Those boys did good. Steve is peak huggable. I wish my gal Penelope hugged him instead of Matt. Maybe I should do a fanfic.
Rescue Dawn (2006)
When I heard that Steve was a Werner Herzog fan and that’s the sole reason he signed on to do this dramatization of Werner’s harrowing Vietnam War documentary Little Dieter Needs to Fly, I was all over it like Werner on La Soufrière in the midst of erupting. Steve plays Duane Martin to Christian Bale’s Dieter Dengler, and they become prisoner camp buddies who plan to break out and brave the hellish Laotian jungle to seek rescue from whatever American forces might be nearby. The movie is a testament to Steve’s dedication to his craft, since Werner took cast and crew to Thailand and filmed on location while the actors all subjected themselves to near-starvation conditions to deliver one of the most realistic depictions of POW experience in film. The despairing look in Steve’s eyes is nothing short of haunting, and yet, he still injects a subtle Zahnian sense of humor in some scenes, which only makes his descent into hopelessness ever more heartbreaking. Fucking brilliant.
Comanche Moon (2008)
Steve is a COWBOY. And not just any cowboy. He’s the younger incarnation of one of the most lovable cowboys in all western fiction: Captain Gus McCrae. Playing the role of the youthful version of Robert Duvall’s take on the Lonesome Dove character is intimidating, but Steve pulled it off. He doesn’t do a Duvall impression, though; he just so accurately portrays the more brash and lovesick young Gus of the prequel with all the confidence and charm necessary, that I swooned to see it. Steve is a horseman in real life, living on a ranch in Kentucky whenever he’s not acting, so he’s as easy in the saddle as he is on the eyes and heart. Given my predilection for cowboys and Steve in general, this was a fangirl combination for the ages. So this miniseries, despite being a mediocre adaptation of Larry McMurtry’s classic book, remains one of my favorite Steve roles ever. I just cannot help it.
Treme (2010-13)
Steve’s first TV series commitment as a regular proves a perfect fit for his character actor talents on a longer timescale, giving us even more opportunity to appreciate his humble genius. As Davis McAlary, Steve is a more sophisticated form of the trademark Steve stoner type, since he’s an outspoken radio DJ who’s just as motivated to promote deep appreciation of New Orleans jazz as he is to party. He’s as full of optimism about music as he is pessimism about tourists and gentrification, and only Steve could make his character’s more eye-rolling qualities downright attractive. He has enough joie de vivre to drag his friends into cockamamie pursuits, which usually lead to something fun and exciting and soul-stirring, if not entirely effective all the time. Steve is a joy to watch in a high-quality project, and I’m glad it’s led to him doing more TV since.
Cowboys (2020)
Here we are again, back in the saddle, and this time, loping around the picturesque mountains and rivers of Montana with a sweet little son in tow. Steve is Troy, the enthusiastic dad with complex character flaws who attempts to rescue his newly outed trans son Joe from a life of forced gender norms in their old-fashioned rural town. It’s an impromptu camping trip that gets misinterpreted as a kidnapping by Joe’s mother Sally, who is still coming to terms about Joe’s sexual identity and Troy’s mental illness. It’s a gentle film, full of family drama and heartfelt moments about coming to terms with the people you love. Steve is in full-blown middle-aged dad mode, and he’s irresistible. The scene where he has to admit to Joe that he lost his medication while saving Joe from drowning in a river is Steve at his most vulnerable, and at the top of his game.