Vale Gene Hackman! To salute the amazing career of the late and great actor, who passed away this week, Luke Buckmaster revisits five of his best movies.
Hollywood has lost one of its greatest and most iconic actors, with Gene Hackman passing away this week at age 95. He retired a long time ago, circa 2004, being prolific until that point then ripping the celebrity bandaid off and performing no more.
It’s perhaps a tad unfortunate that an actor with such gravitas capped off an extraordinary career alongside Ray Romano in Welcome to Mooseport—but then again, Hackman was deceptively good at comedy and had a cheeky sense of humour, so maybe he saw a funny side of it. He acted in about 80 movies, which, when they were good, were sometimes very very good, boosted by his ever-commanding presence. Here’s a selection of Hackman’s best work.
The French Connection (1971)
It doesn’t take long for William Friedkin’s gritty action classic to deliver the goods, dressing Hackman’s Detective Jimmy Doyle in a Santa suit and deploying him in hot pursuit of a suspect. But this early scene, which establishes the film’s coarse, streetside energy, is nothing compared to its pièce de résistance: a brilliantly paced chase sequence rightly regarded as one of cinema’s finest.
Doyle arrives at a train station to apprehend a very dodgy Frenchman (Marcel Bozzuffi) but is on the opposite side of the tracks. So the Frenchman boards a train while Doyle jumps into a car and tears after it, Friedkin cutting between them, as the target pushes through carriages and Doyle breaks countless road laws. Some shots are presented from the car’s POV; others combine the train, the car and Hackman in the same image—a massive logistical challenge. The director later said “it was only by the grace of God that nobody was hurt or injured.”
The Conversation (1974)
The technology depicted in Francis Ford Coppola’s haunting surveillance thriller was always going to date, but Coppola’s directorial prowess and Hackman’s finely layered, guilt-ridden performance keep it eternally great. Hackman’s Harry Caul is hired by a mysterious client (never a good sign) to survey a young couple, recording a conversation between them that he becomes obsessed with, deciphering chilling comments such as “he’d kill us if he got the chance.”
Caul composites a story in his head using various fragments, in the lead-up to a twisty denouncement that reveals the truth is dramatically different. The film has a quiet, menacing elegance and highly immersive staging, including a famous opening scene that begins in the air above San Francisco’s Union Square, building a methodically layered soundscape. Arriving before Watergate, and well before the internet, The Conversation is a magnet for the label “prescient.”
Crimson Tide (1995)
At the heart of Tony Scott’s brink-of-disaster submarine movie is a power-jostling relationship between two chalk-and-cheese characters, butting heads on a vessel that could potentially trigger World War III. Hackman is the cigar-chomping Captain Ramsey, a gung-ho military man with a penchant for delivering Hackmanian turns of phrase—like “son of a bitch!” and “mutiny!” Denzel Washington is his more cautious second-in-command, urging restraint. It’s a very fun and chewy dynamic.
Scott directs with a little less freneticism than usual, rightly trusting his performers to carry it, Hackman putting a deliciously theatrical stamp on various chest-beating monologues. The film has play-like qualities, loaded with juicy dialogue and mostly unfolding in a single setting.
Enemy of the State (1998)
Hackman returned to a The Conversation-esque role as surveillance expert and former NSA specialist Edward Lyle, in this twitchy tech thriller also directed by Tony Scott. Lyle would surely concur with that old saying “it’s not paranoia if they’re really after you.” This cranky quick-thinking fellow is properly introduced quite deep into the runtime, coming to the assistance of Will Smith’s lawyer protagonist Robert Clayton Dean, who’s being pursued by NSA agents after inadvertently obtaining evidence of the murder of a congressman.
The film’s best line is just six words, dropped after Lyle detonates a bomb that destroys his hideout, triggering a Michael Bay-sized explosion. Hooning away, Dean asks Lyle why he blew up his own home, to which his vein-bulging companion blurts: “because you made a phone call!”
The Birdcage (1996)
In Mike Nichols’ remake of French comedy La Cage aux Folles, Hackman is again perfect as a love-to-hate conservative, playing the hard-right Senator Kevin Keeley. It’s a “meet the inlaws” story with a farcical twist. Kevin’s daughter Barbara (Calista Flockhart) is engaged to Val (Dan Futterman), whose father Armand (Robin Williams) is the gay owner of a drag club, and partner to the more effeminate Albert (Nathan Lane). Val asks Armand and Albert to pretend to be straight for the Keeley’s, launching a comedy of errors, and ultimately a message about staying true to yourself.
It sounds cheesy but everything comes together fabulously. There’s lots of laugh-out-loud moments and a very fun finale, in which the only way for Keeley to elude the media is to dress up in drag. Everybody now: “We are family!“
