9 Best Performances In West Side Story (2021), Ranked

Steven Spielberg’s remake of West Side Story may have underperformed at the box office, but it’s been universally praised by critics for its dazzling visuals and musical numbers. While many of the film’s reviews have focused on its technical aspects, the cast’s performances are incredible, too.

Actors like Ansel Elgort and Ariana DeBose took roles that were made iconic by other performers more than half a century ago and managed to put their own personal spin on them. Rachel Zegler leads a stellar ensemble with a star-making turn as María.

9 Ansel Elgort As Tony

Tony is the Romeo in West Side Story’s musical reimagining of the Shakespeare classic Romeo and Juliet. Ansel Elgort plays the paroled gangster in the new version as he falls for the sister of a rival gang leader and reassesses his life of crime.

Elgort is massively outshined by his co-star Rachel Zegler, but he gives a likable enough turn as Tony. The actor really sinks his teeth into the guilt that Tony feels over the crime that got him sent to prison, reflecting on his involvement with the Jets as a newly paroled convict.

8 Brian d’Arcy James As Officer Krupke

Officer Krupke is West Side Story’s resident bumbling cop, portrayed in the new remake by Brian d’Arcy James. As always, the character is a goofy foil for the Jets.

In the remake, Krupke’s role is hurt by the fact that he’s not present for the song about him. In the original, that’s one of the character’s most memorable moments.

7 David Alvarez As Bernardo

Audiences aren’t expected to pick a side in West Side Story’s gang conflict. There are no straightforward heroes or villains – the point is that there are sympathetic human beings on both sides of the feud. The Sharks are humanized by the passion and conviction of their leader, Bernardo, played brilliantly in the remake by David Alvarez.

Alvarez’s nuanced turn brings real emotional weight to the stakes of the gang warfare, despite the glitzy musical context. He shares terrific romantic chemistry with Ariana Debose’s Anita and his overprotectiveness of Rachel Zegler’s María is met with fiery contentiousness.

6 Josh Andrés Rivera As Chino

Chino is Bernardo’s best friend. At the beginning of the story, he’s the timid nerd who isn’t allowed a full membership in the gang. By the end of it, he’s armed and determined to kill Tony.

Josh Andrés Rivera does an incredible job with this journey, playing the extremes of both sides of Chino. He leans into the shy nerdiness in the early scenes, then digs deeper into Chino’s darker emotions in the later scenes after Bernardo’s murder.

5 Corey Stoll As Lieutenant Schrank

The most memorable police character in the 1961 original is Officer Krupke, mainly because there’s a whole song about him, but in the 2021 remake, Corey Stoll steals the limelight as Lieutenant Schrank.

Schrank is a typical hard-boiled cop and Stoll delightfully hams up his performance to suit the tone of the musical. Stoll previously gave a memorable turn in a well-worn role as the young Junior Soprano in The Many Saints of Newark.

4 Ariana DeBose As Anita

Bernardo’s girlfriend Anita is one of the moral centers of the movie who’s constantly trying to persuade her gangster boyfriend to renounce his life of crime.

Ariana Debose gives an extremely likable turn in the role, nails the tonal balance between lighthearted comedy and harrowing tragedy, and to top it all off, she nails the iconic “America” number.

3 Rita Moreno As Valentina

Rita Moreno, who gave an iconic turn as Anita in the 1961 original, appears in the 2021 remake as Valentina, the shopkeeper who gives Tony a place to stay while he’s out on parole.

The darkest scene in West Side Story (besides the central murder) sees the Jets attacking Anita when she arrives to talk to Tony. In the remake, Valentina saves Anita from the attack and delivers a powerful monologue about the monsters that the Jets have grown up to become.

2 Mike Faist As Riff

Riff is the wisecracking leader of the Jets who offers an amoral counterpoint to Tony’s sympathetic remorse. He’s a classic example of a street tough taking out his own pain and anger on the world.

The tone of West Side Story is the trickiest thing to pull off, because it’s both a fun all-singing-all-dancing extravaganza and a violent story about gangland infighting. Mike Faist’s pitch-perfect performance as Riff in the remake fits that tone like a glove, flitting between menace, pathos, and snappy rhythm.

1 Rachel Zegler As María

Rachel Zegler is easily the breakout star of the movie. Every actor in the West Side Story remake gives a phenomenal performance, but Zegler outshines them all as the Juliet of the story, María. She plays María as both sweet and fierce. She’s the lovable moral center of the movie who refuses to be controlled and follows her heart.

Zegler is burdened with sticking the landing in the film’s final scene, conveying the gravity and importance of the story’s violence-begets-violence message in a powerful monologue, and she knocks the delivery out of the park.

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Ben Sherlock
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Ben Sherlock is a writer, comedian, independent filmmaker, and Burt Reynolds enthusiast. He writes lists for Screen Rant and features and reviews for Game Rant. He’s currently in pre-production on his first feature (and has been for a while, because filmmaking is expensive). You can catch him performing standup at odd pubs around the UK that will give him stage time. Previously, he wrote for Taste of Cinema, Comic Book Resources, and BabbleTop.

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