Since beginning his career in the late 1990s, Irish actor Colin Farrell has been on a proverbial rollercoaster. Following a handful of early film and TV appearances, Farrell first gained the attention of Hollywood when he starred in Joel Schumacher’s 2000 war drama Tigerland. And his breakout role came in 2002 when he played Agent Danny Witwer in Steven Spielberg’s Minority Report. His excellent work, good looks, and onscreen charisma quickly positioned Farrell as a potentially huge leading man. But a string of moderate successes, outright failures, and mixed critical responses with films like Phone Booth, Daredevil, S.W.A.T., Miami Vice, and the universally derided Alexander cooled the actor’s jets for a while, while Farrell also rode out some personal relationship drama and a trip to rehab.

He came out the other end of that phase with more managed expectations, transitioning from standard leading man fare to more wide-ranging character...