Thoughts

We lost Gene Hackman this past year, the legendary actor and star of The French Connection (1971), directed by William Friedkin. This film is dark and gritty, and exactly the kind of realistic action/thriller I live for experiencing. Hackman portrays Popeye Doyle, a tough-as-rocks narcotics agent on the tail of a big international heroin score.

The story has been adapted to the screen at least twice, most famously by Spielberg in 2005. This time, they took the overdone “everything is on the computer screen” approach and stuck Ice Cube front and center to put on a show. But he does anything other than put on a show, he practically sounds like he's reading the script for the very first time with his finger dragging across the lines as he reads.