Shot on the hoof around the city - including its legendary car chase scene, which only adds to its singular terror - the film is unthinkable without Hackman’s ultra-real performance, which is by turns charming, repellant, loveable and abhorrent.
But this is an excellent performance as B-movie producer Harry Zimm, fully showing Hackman’s comedic gifts as the hapless klutz suffering one indignity after another, in contrast to John Travolta’s super-cool gangster/wannabe producer Chili Palmer.
Brilliant - if highly controversial - Alan Parker thriller in which Hackman and Willem Defoe play two FBI agents who investigate the murder of three civil rights protestors in Mississippi and take on the Ku Klux Klan.
The film is an excellent sequel, most notable for Hackman’s performance in scenes where Doyle is captured by Charnier and injected with heroin as he’s interrogated.
Hackman plays Luthor like an opportunistic hustler rather than a criminal mastermind, a super-smart prankster who likes to mess with Superman, rather than be his nemesis.
