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8th March 2025
04:34pm GMT
People are discovering and rediscovering Hoosiers, one of Gene Hackman's most beloved movies, following the sad news of the two-time Oscar winner's death.
Newly available to stream on Prime Video, the 1986 sports drama is set in the '50s. It sees the legendary actor play a failed college coach named Norman Dale (Gene Hackman) who gets a chance at redemption when he is hired to direct the basketball program at a high school in a tiny Indiana town.
"After a teacher (Barbara Hershey) persuades a star player to quit and focus on his long-neglected studies, Dale struggles to develop a winning team in the face of community criticism for his temper and his unconventional choice of assistant coach: Shooter (Dennis Hopper in an Oscar-nominated performance), a notorious alcoholic," the plot synopsis reads.
Inspired in part by the story of the 1954 Indiana state champions Milan High School, Hoosiers is often cited as being one of the sports films ever made.
And according to the service JustWatch, it is one of several Hackman movies people have been seeking out in recent days, alongside the perhaps more well-known The French Connection (streaming on Disney+), Mississippi Burning (streaming on Prime Video) and The Conversation (available to rent from Apple TV and the Sky Store).
Holding a 91% score on Rotten Tomatoes, you can read a sample of some of the rave reviews for Hoosiers below:
ChrisStuckmann.com: "This film has so much heart. Every time I watch it, I am on the verge of tears for almost the entire runtime."
FilmFrenzy: "Much of its appeal comes courtesy of Gene Hackman, whose work here -- a canny mix of aw-shucks bluster and below-the-surface slyness -- was a warm-up for the career-best performance he would deliver two years later in Mississippi Burning."
ReelFilmReviews: "It's easy enough to see why Hoosiers has become one of the most endearing sports movies in cinematic history."
Time Magazine: "Hackman is wonderful as an inarticulate man tense with the struggle to curb a flaring, mysterious anger."
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