Charlize Theron carves a twisty path to ‘Dark Places’

A few months ago, Charlize Theron emerged as perhaps the fiercest character of the summer movie season and one of the most notable heroines in recent memory when she played the strong-willed Imperator Furiosa in “Mad Max: Fury Road.”

But on Aug. 7, Theron comes back in a rather different guise: as a haunted woman named Libby Day on a quest to solve brutal murders in the genre pic “Dark Places.” Although based on a book by “Gone Girl” author Gillian Flynn, “Dark Places” is a rather differently scaled movie from “Mad Max,” not least evidenced by it hitting a premium VOD window nearly two months before its theatrical release.

Theron’s part is the latest in what has been a pingpong career, even by the standards of an inconsistent Hollywood.

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The actress, who turns 40 the day “Dark Places” hits theaters, has had a colorful career over the past two decades. At times, she has seemed on a straight climb to the creative A-list, tasting Oscar success and achieving international celebrity, only to somehow miss the ring, drop down and then repeat the process.

After a promising supporting career in the likes of “The Yards” and “Reindeer Games,” the South Africa native had her artistic breakout with “Monster” in 2003, going deep as complex serial killer Aileen Wuornos. Hollywood took notice, and she won numerous prizes, including an Oscar. Two years later, she followed it up with the acclaimed “North Country,” and her prestige bona fides were sealed.

Or so they seemed. Theron, by dint of her own choices or of Hollywood’s, then ended up in something of a genre nether-space — with a dud in “Aeon Flux” and a hit, but hardly a career-maker, in the soon-to-be-forgotten Will Smith vehicle “Hancock” in the summer of 2008. Her attempts to reclaim her cred at that time with some drama failed too — she was in a well-regarded disappointment (“In the Valley of Elah”) and a less well-regarded disappointment (“Sleepwalking,” which she also produced).

Theron then took a few years off and seemed out of the game until she tackled the role of Jason Reitman’s 2011 movie “Young Adult” as an unhinged former “it girl” who’s been underachieving emotionally since high school.

Though the film was a commercial dud, it won plaudits for Theron, who seemed back on the A-list path. She was lauded for a complicated lead part and nominated for a Golden Globe. And then, shortly after, she ended up in two studio wobblers: “Snow White and the Huntsman” and “Prometheus.” Neither was a disaster, commercially or critically — the former did inspire a sequel and the latter might — but neither was cementing her status as either a huge draw or Oscar bait.

Actors rarely have the kind of control over their careers that we writers like to think. And Theron’s uneven résumé can be as much an indictment of the studios as Theron herself, who no doubt has been victimized by a system that continues to offer only a paucity of worthy roles to talented actresses.

Still, the up-and-down trajectory is notable: Numerous times on the cusp of being a new Angelina Jolie, and just as many times back in the middle of the pack. There are fewer clear demonstrations of this than Imperator Furiosa and Libby Day in the same moviegoing season.

Theron may yet make the climb back; lord knows she’s done it before, and Hollywood badly needs actresses like her with strong chops and equally strong international appeal. At the same time, when one looks at some of the misses over the past decade, it’s hard to avoid — at least for a minute — feeling a measure of puzzlement about her career, about the system or about a little bit of both.

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