Gene Hackman’s grandfather and uncle were small-town newspaper reporters. The abusive father who abandoned Hackman when he was just 13 operated a daily’s printing press. Hackman himself dabbled in journalism school.
So it figures that he would have been compelling as Alex Grazier, the worldly but ethical war correspondent at the moral center of Roger Spottiswoode’s 1983 film, Under Fire.
Hackman’s death—still unexplained—at 95 prompted an outpouring of well-earned praise, focusing on his portrayals of morally compromised protagonists (narcotics detective Popeye Doyle in The French Connection) or outright villains (Lex Luthor in the Superman franchise).
Few if any obituaries have mentioned Under Fire. Yet Hackman’s Alex Grazier transformed that Reagan-era movie from a standard-issue political thriller into a meditation on adhering to truth amid the conflicting pressures of personal loyalty, political ideology, and professional duty.