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A small part of me kicked the bucket, expired, crossed the great divide, croaked, passed away, breathed it’s last, went the way of all flesh, perished, and checked out the other day. Monty Python allusion aside, I saw a tragic ad that shocked me to the very core.

Benicio Del Toro was selling chocolate. Not only this but the ad didn’t even use an interesting idea to do it – it was merely a bad pastiche of the already dreadful Oceans series of movies, directed by the artistically free-falling Bryan Singer.
The advertisement consists of lulling the audience into a false sense of security by passing itself off as a crime caper movie trailer, using all the typical conventions (croaking cornball voice-over, a pounding Guy Ritchie-esque musical accompaniment, and a convincing Angelina Jolie look-alike in tight-fitting catsuit, complete with scalpel-sharp, tiger-like cheek bones). Then presumably, the ad attempts to shock you at the end, by revealing that the gold that Benicio thought they were heisting is really a vault full of golden Magnum ice-cream bars. The real shock, however – where your heart and stomach sink in sympathy – comes from the realisation that this bastion of cool, this titan of film acting, this icon of respectable 21st century actors, is Mr. Whippy.
Now, I hate the term ‘sold out’ as much as I’m sure you do, but the typical reaction is “Wow, well, I guess he’s got to pay the bills,” or “Man, hope he got paid well for that one.” Yes, I hope he did get his thirty pieces of silver. Okay, that’s a little harsh, but come on, he doesn’t need to be doing this! The advertising world needs a colossal punt to the proverbial crotch for their despoliation of our acting talent. Don’t buy any Magnums, people! 
At this point let’s remind ourselves what a monolith Benicio is in the alternative acting world (you may read ‘alternative’, here, as ‘good’). This is the guy who played Fred Fenster in The Usual Suspects; brandishing a knife, he thrashed around maniacally in a bath tub asking to be electrocuted in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas; and he portrayed the inimitably smooth Franky Four Fingers in Snatch. His career is simply too cool for an ice-cream ad to kill.
So yes, unfortunately he’s had this little hiccup, or shall we say peccadillo, but it’s mostly internet trolls that can’t help but whine about it between their World of Warcraft tourneys. People that really like his acting could care less. So he’ll come back, I’m sure. As long as he can keep movies like Wolfman from the door, he’ll be out of the ice-cream van and back into our indie hearts in no time, although probably with a new storey on his house ...