Gene Hackman’s Forgotten Classic

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.