Word: hackmans
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...Last Temptation of Christ) is a stick of righteousness waiting to explode. But the movie also finds recesses where human dignity and compassion wait to be summoned. It is alert to the shifting emotional weight and moral responsibilities in any relationship, especially in the quiet interplay of Hackman and McDormand, two ordinary middle-aged people searching awkwardly to be of use to each other. Hackman caps a brilliant career here as an FBI agent that both J. Edgar Hoover and Martin Luther King Jr. could love. He takes the measure of this film: a watchmaker's craftsmanship, a marathoner...
...market, and studios -- especially Orion, which has a rep for taking chances on political pictures -- were soon scrambling for the next Platoon. Cynicism is served with a twist in Hollywood, and Mississippi Burning has taken its licks as a ready-made Big Issue blockbuster. Before its release, even Hackman gibed that its producers "looked at how much Platoon made and they went, 'Yeah! What other causes can we make some money...
...Mississippi Burning opens, three civil rights workers ride through Jessup (Neshoba) County, avid to get out of town. Their station wagon is overtaken by some good ole boys in a pickup truck. Blam! Blam! Blam! Officially, the three are "missing." FBI agents Ward (Dafoe) and Anderson (Hackman) know otherwise. They might be from two different colleges -- say, Harvard and Hard Knocks. But they are both feds in a bad town, and they know what smells. The sheriff, for one. "You down here to help us solve our nigger problem?" he asks agreeably. No. They are there to wash some soiled...
This privileged moment from Mississippi Burning comes courtesy of Gene Hackman, the movies' modern Spencer Tracy. "Gene is a colossally subtle actor," says director Alan Parker. "He knows what not to do. Like Tracy, he doesn't talk about what he does; he just does it." Hackman, 57, has America's face, a body that has absorbed its share of life's shocks, a heart that has taken a licking and keeps on ticking. He can play the stern father or the doting uncle, a bad cop or a top sergeant, your best friend or the man you wouldn...
...Hackman thinks of himself as a craftsman in an honored, perhaps vanishing tradition. "All of us," he says, "from ditchdiggers to bus drivers to shoe salesmen, have a need to create something. I'm blessed that I found a profession that lets me do so. Once in a while, a piece of artistry flows by me or through me, but it's a mistake to think of myself as 'artistic.' It looks relaxed, easy, but I work very hard...