Hawke's story that's being told as he goes on a one-day training session so he can learn the ropes to make the leap from cop to narc. As Jake Hoyt, Hawke's day of discovery is a never ending pastiche of one more circle of hell being descended into until, in the end, Hoyt gets to know the devil himself.

Ben Kingsley
Sexy Beast
  How here's someone you don't see getting lauded for their talent every day ... just kidding. Ben Kingsley previously won the Best Actor Oscar for his role as Gandhi. He also received an Oscar nomination for his role as gangster Meyer Lansky in Bugsy. Here Kingsley is cast as a menacing crook by the name of Don Logan who'll stoop to any depth in order to enlist a retired safecracker back into a life of crime for one last job. Sure it's the same old "one last job" caper film, but it's more engaging than most, especially when Kingsley's on the screen. He steals every scene he's in while creating one of the most menacing screen villains since that thing that exploded out of the guy's chest in Alien.

Ian McKellen
The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
  As Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, Ian McKellen has a marvelous time conjuring magic on screen in what could have been an overbloated special effects fest. Instead, the film manages to take the hugely popular - and just plain huge - Tolkien book and turn it into an instant film classic. But in this case the casting is near perfect, especially in the case of Ian McKellen. He gives his Gandalf just the right measure of smarts, empathy, power and grandeur all sprinkled with a dollop of humor and tempered with the knowledge that McKellen seems to be having a grand old time doing what he's doing.

Jon Voight
Ali
  Jon Voight has been a two-time Oscar nominee (Midnight Cowboy, Runaway Train) and one-time winner (Coming Home), but for a while there it seemed he was best known as the father of Angelina Jolie. But his series of so-so roles turned into a career upswing. Now he's up for Oscar again in his role as Howard Cosell in Ali. Voight plays Cosell as almost a father figure to Will Smith's Ali, someone Ali can get the straight goods from, as opposed to the sycophants and hangers-on who constantly surrounded the champ. It's perhaps the most real and authentic relationship in the movie and Voight plays the role with loving affection conjuring up the Cosell we once knew and loved - bad toupée and all.