RIP Gene Hackman

 Not my favorite news to wake up to. RIP to one of the all time greats who in terms of perception was perhaps "burdened" by the way he made it look all too easy. Hackman could be absolutely hilarious in different ways in The Royal Tenenbaums, The Birdcage, Superman and of course the blind man who was going to make espresso in Young Frankenstein, but equally powerful was his dramatic range from his absolutely dominating performances in films like Unforgiven, The French Connection, the underrated Scarecrow, but he could dominate the screen through subdued power in I Never Sang For My Father and of course his all time work in The Conversation. Hackman even could make the cash grab sequel a work of art, where most actors might've phoned in a reprise in a lesser sequel, Hackman took French Connection II as an opportunity to give it his all offering one of the most penetrating depictions of drug withdrawal you'll see in any film. But that was the nature of Hackman, unfussy and straight to the point, yet within that there was so much range and talent, where he was always consistent in that you knew you'd get at base level a good performance from Hackman, potentially a great one, and at the very least the film would improve thanks to having Hackman show up for a minute or if was leading the whole damn thing. Hackman chose to end his career relatively early for an actor, but in a way, it represented his style of acting to begin with. Where Hackman had said what he needed to as a performer, had given us so much of his time in terms of dynamic, fascinating and potent depictions onscreen, and for every second of it he made cinema that much brighter. One of my favorite behind the scenes stories comes from Morgan Freeman where he described the scene where his Ned is getting tortured by Hackman's Little Bill in Unforgiven, and how the moment where Hackman went to his deeply intense yet quiet threat about lies, that his expression of petrified fear was genuine by just how Hackman could turn it on like few others and make you simply believe it.