the importance of context

one of my favourite films is Heat (1995) and one of the things that I like about it is that it's much more nuanced and complex - much more realistic - than other films about cops and criminals where the criminals are the bad guys and the cops are the good guys. In the film, the commonality between Al Pacino's character and Robert De Niro's character is highlighted. One of the greatest TV series ever - The Wire - did a similar thing: showing the human drama and the common humanity on both sides of the law.

Interestingly though, Michael Mann, who wrote, produced and directed Heat says that he saw the two characters as antithetical in many ways. Yes, they have some qualities in common, but they are worlds apart in other ways ||| Mann says that one of the important ways that the two are different is that Neal/ De Niro is a sociopath, while Vincent/ Pacino is not - he has a social conscience. 

a whole other dimension....now that I think of it....of this idea of parallelism between two ostensibly opposing characters, is that between the two actors - De Niro and Pacino. Their careers seem to parallel each other in many ways, but they're also very different, of course. 

The two appeared together in another film more recently - Righteous Kill (2008) - but it was nowhere near as succesful as Heat. So, it just goes to show - just having them together in a film isn't a guarantee of success. They're such great actors though that you could almost imagine that it would be a guarantee of success, but apparently not. and it's true that, although having De Niro and Pacino together was a draw-card for Heat, it's also a brilliant example of film making. They weren't expected to make up for any deficiencies in the film. 

I think a similar principle applies to a whole range of projects and work situations. From time to time you get the right chemistry of team members and context and success is achieved. but context is crucial. someone could be highly skilled, knowledgeable, experienced, and have a lot of talent and intelligence in their field, but the work setting and the rest of the team need to match up with those qualities for them to be effective. 

Having the right person in the wrong context or role is like using a formula 1 vehicle as a taxi // it's not made for that, and it's actually not going to do a good job.