Jon Hamm has gone through a particularly strange career shift in years following his legendary turn as Don Draper on AMC’s acclaimed drama series Mad Men. Even though Draper’s serious demeanor had been his defining trait, Hamm has taken a venture into mainstream comedy as he tackles a wide variety of “character roles” in both television and film.
While he’s currently reprising his role as Gabriel on the second season of Good Omens, Hamm also has a packed slate of new films that he’s working on. Here are the ten best Jon Hamm movies, ranked.
10 Bridesmaids
Even while he was in the midst of filming Mad Men, Hamm managed to take a break from the serious vibes of the 1960s to appear in one of the funniest films ever made. He has a brief extended cameo as Annie’s (Kristen Wiig) boyfriend in one of the most hilariously awkward sex scenes in recent memory.
Even though Bridesmaids couldn’t be more different than Mad Men, Hamm is essentially playing the same type of self-absorbed, wealthy jerk who doesn’t take anyone else’s feelings into account. He’s the standout male performance in the film.
9 Bad Times At The El Royale
Cabin in the Woods director Drew Goddard concocted another excellent genre mashup with his highly underrated 2018 confined location thriller Bad Times At The El Royale. The 1960s-set film follows a group of alleged strangers that are brought together at a luxury mysterious hotel on the border between Nevade and California; little do they know that they’re being stalked by an enigmatic serial killer (Chris Hemsworth).
Hamm has a brief, yet very entertaining role as the El Royale’s bartender, who pays the price for looking too closely at one of his guests.
8 Richard Jewell
Hamm has a sense of authority to him that became evident throughout Mad Men; while obviously the audience learned to care about Draper more over time as they learned more about his past, Hamm’s commanding presence made him a popular choice to play intimidating law enforcement officers in films.
Clint Eastwood thought it wise to cast Hamm as a stone-hearted FBI agent that investigates the titular unlikely hero (Paul Walter Hauser) in the 2019 biopic Richard Jewell. Impressively, any inherent charisma Hamm had disappeared so he could play a completely unlikeable character.
7 The Town
Ben Affleck’s second film as a director is more than just a standard heist thriller in the style of Michael Mann. It’s a film about relationships, the evolution of lifelong friends, and how the economic crisis puts pressure upon ordinary people to lash out at authorities. It’s a remarkably mature spin on a genre film that signified Affleck was a much more ambitious filmmaker than many had realized.
Hamm, of course, is cast as the menacing and generally unlikeable FBI agent tasked with tracking down the film’s protagonists. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!
6 No Sudden Move
The great nature of Steven Soderbergh’s films is that many great actors can pop in and and out on a moment’s notice. Soderbergh assembled one of his most impressive casts to date (which is no small statement) for his 2021 heist thriller No Sudden Move, which featured extended supporting roles for minor cast members like David Harbour, Kieran Culkin, Ray Liotta, Bill Duke, Matt Damon, and the late great Ray Liotta among others.
Hamm appears briefly as the detective Joe Finney, who is tasked with interviewing the incompetent accountant Matt Wertz (Harbour).
5 Beirut
Beirut is the type of film that Hamm should be making more often, and frankly, it’s the type of movie that Hollywood needs to invest more into. An old-fashioned political thriller with a script by the beloved Michael Clayton and Andor writer Tony Gilroy, Beirut follows an American negotiator (Hamm) who is forced to go on a dangerous mission in the Middle East as a way to rescue a friend.
It’s a “movie star” level performance, and Beirut very much feels like the sort of “talky” thrillers that Warren Beatty or Dustin Hoffman would have starred in back in the 1970s.
4 The Report
Scott Z. Burns’ brilliant political thriller The Report serves as a profound deconstruction of malpractice on the part of the American government through the use of the torture program in the wake of 9/11. In many ways, it serves as an extension (and a correction) to some perceptions that film fans may have had after watching Kathryn Bigelow’s Zero Dark Thirty.
Hamm plays the unenviable role of Deputy National Security Advisor, Denis McDonough, who refuses to take responsibility or offer any details for the graphic details of the “torture report.”
3 Top Gun: Maverick
Top Gun: Maverick is a masterpiece, and the reputation that the film earned as being the “savior of cinema” is not one that isn’t warranted. There are few movie sequels that transcend their originals and become classics in their own right, but Top Gun: Maverick is definitely part of that selective club.
As much as Top Gun: Maverick is a celebration of Tom Cruise’s stardom, the film works as well as it does because of all the actors that are part of it. Hamm’s role as Vice Admiral "Cyclone" Simpson is a pivotal one; by the end, the grumpy Vice Admiral has to let go and believe in Maverick’s plan.
2 Baby Driver
Baby Driver is one of Edgar Wright’s best films, and it was constructed in a way that masked Hamm’s character motivations until the very end. While Bud initially seems like an ally to Baby (Ansel Elgort) and Deborah (Lily James), he turns on his former getaway driver after his lover (Eiza Gonzalez) is killed in a firefight with the police.
Hamm becomes entirely menacing and gleefully over-the-top by the end as he turns into the villain of the story; his final parking lot battle with Baby is one of the film’s standout action sequences.
1 Confess, Fletch
No one was really asking for a reboot of Fletch, as the original Chevy Chase film still holds up as one of the most rewatchable comedies of the 1980s. However, director Greg Mottola decided to go back to the original source material to tell a new entry in the Fletch saga that starred Hamm as the hapless private investigator.
In this iteration, Fletch finds himself accused of a murder, and must solve the case in order to clear his name. It’s a shame that Confess, Fletch barely hit theaters before debuting on Showtime, but hopefully Hamm and Motttola can one day put together a sequel.