Robert Horton is a Scarecrow board member and a longtime film critic. This series of "critic's notes" is chance to highlight worthy films playing locally and connect them to the riches of Scarecrow's collection.
Gene Hackman. God, what a career. Here are a couple of vintage reviews from the period when Hackman was just working in anything and everything, including a shard of a 1989 press conference he did in Seattle for The Package; he was shooting Narrow Margin in Vancouver at that time. These two films have mostly faded from prominence, but Hackman does professional work in both. The first review leads off with a then-fresh, now-forgotten spy case.
The Package
As far as spy-movie footage goes, ABC-TV’s recent Nightly News “re-creation” of Felix Bloch’s escapades was slightly more convincing than The Package. But both cover familiar ground.
The Package, however, doesn’t pretend to be anything but fiction. It’s about an Army sergeant (Gene Hackman) who’s assigned to escort a troublesome soldier (Tommy Lee Jones) from Europe to the United States. When the “package,” as Jones is called, slips out of Hackman’s grasp, Hackman begins to sense an elaborate plot focusing on an upcoming U.S.-Soviet summit in Chicago.
The film, directed by Andrew (Above the Law) Davis, trots along at a competent pace. It has a few interesting threads that were either never developed or dropped on the cutting-room floor, such as Hackman’s bantering, loving relationship with his ex-wife (Joanna Cassidy). Perhaps the most intriguing of these threads is the pairing of Hackman and his package; Tommy Lee Jones has an offbeat, mysterious playfulness that jibes well with Hackman’s simple, blunt Army lifer. But they spend too little time together.
There’s also an Oliver North figure, played by John Heard, and a standard issue Chicago cop (Dennis Franz) who helps Hackman circumvent official channels. But the different elements of The Package don’t come together, and its attempt at conjuring a sense of governmental paranoia seems tame compared to reality.
Hackman contributes a nice character study. He’s one of the few actors who can play simple characters without playing down to them, and that’s exactly what he’s up to here.
Hackman was in Seattle recently (he’s shooting a movie in Vancouver, British Columbia), and he spoke about his acting method. “Usually things that look effortless have a lot of hard work behind them,” he said, referring to his non-showy style. “I don’t take any of it very casually.”
Hackman described his early stirrings toward acting; walking out of a movie in his hometown of Danville, Ohio, he was stunned to catch his reflection in a mirror and not see Errol Flynn.
“I realized then that I was so involved with the character in the theater that I had really transferred myself into that. At that moment, I think I really decided that I would like to do this. I think I could do this.” After a stint in the Marines and some knocking around New York, he did it. Hackman has worked a lot in both leading and supporting roles, in the last couple of years. “I would do almost anything as an actor, if it was offered to me. I like to work. There are people out there who have some kind of parameters about how much work you should do. I don’t know who those people are. Let them talk to my ex-wife’s lawyers.”
Bat 21
Variety, the show-business bible, just reported that the busiest leading man over the last five years was none other than Gene Hackman (in a somewhat dubious tie with Steve Guttenberg).
Sure enough, Hackman seems to be turning nothing down; if he is no longer exactly bankable, he’s nevertheless an actor coveted by all the good directors. Bat 21 is the kind of movie an actor such as Hackman can gamble on. Hackman doesn’t have to worry about whether every film he makes is a box office bit, so he can afford to take a flier on a more difficult-tocategorize film. He may well have been attracted to this film through the sheer technical challenge of playing the role.
That’s because for 90 percent of Bat 21, Hackman is alone, speaking what lines he has into a walkie-talkie.
He plays an Air Force colonel who has to eject during a mission over Viet Cong territory. Alone, in the jungle, he is located by a spotter pilot called Bird-dog (Danny Glover, of Lethal Weapon), who fixes his position but can’t call in helicopters to pick up Hackman until the area is secured.
So, in the course of three days of waiting, Hackman and Glover establish a friendship over the airwaves. Adding some suspense is an air strike, previously ordered by Hackman, which will obliterate the area in a matter of hours.
Everything about this situation is competently handled, although very little about it seems new. Glover’s commander (played by singer Jerry Reed, who is also the film’s executive producer) is a typical hard-barking military-man, and a gung-ho chopper pilot (David Marshall Grant) is strictly a movie creation.
Director Peter Markle (The Personals) does try to add little quirky touches around the edges, and wisely concentrates on the relationship between Hackman and Glover. Both actors are good, and Hackman is especially fine at portraying his character’s increasing sense of desperation (“You are gonna come and get me, right?” he whispers into the radio). The movie’s main point, that Hackman discovers the hellishness of war only by being on the ground instead of in the air, comes across as heavy-handed.
Bat 21 (the title refers to Hackman’s code name) is based on a true story. It really happened to Col. Iceal Hambleton, the military expert and golf enthusiast played by Hackman.
There is an odd note sounded at the end of the movie: A postscript tells us that Hambleton now lives happily ever after. Nothing wrong with that, but the postscript says zilch about the tenacious spotter pilot who saved him. This is a peculiar, even insulting, omission, particularly after watching both men share equal time in the film for the previous two hours.
February 28, 2025
