This article makes a strong case for it:
http://grantland.com/hollywood-prospectus/the-greatest-living-american-actor-at-85-gene-hackman-is-gone-but-still-in-charge/
There are a lot of his movies I haven't seen :-[
He's been one of my favories in a lot of flicks. He made The Heist a watchable movie, in spite of Brando dozing through half his scenes. I loved his performance in A Bridge Too Far. All that said, The Royal Tennenbaums sucked, but so does everything else Wes Anderson does. He's the Michael Bay of introspection - can't hold a single thought long enough for you to give a shit about what he's showing you, so you just give up 15 minutes into it.
We'll have to agree to disagree about Wes Anderson.
Hackman does make any movie watchable. As does Bill Murray.
His attempt at a Polish accent in A Bridge Too Far was painfully bad. Better to do a Costner and not even attempt one than to do what Hackman did and mangle it so badly.
Hackman's a Method actor, he's going to try. He wants his epitaph to be:
"He tried."
Hard to imagine that the end of Hackman's film career will most likely be "Welcome to Mooseport"
"Ah yes. Lippenzanner mooses. Wonderful animals. Dumb as a post, but if you shove a cattle prod up their asses you can teach them to do anything."
:D
I'm glad they fixed the title of the article. I was rather apprehensive when I clicked the link.
I have a friend who did some extra work back in the 90's. He was in Crimson Tide. He had nothing but good things to say about Mr. Hackman. And Gene's 85th birthday is Friday.
Eastwood is in more films I like to watch.