The Only Gene Hackman Movie That Has A Perfect Rotten Tomatoes Score

What's Daniel Day Lewis' best film? "Gangs of New York," perhaps? What about his Oscar-winning performance as the 16th President of the United States in "Lincoln?" Surely his efforts there should put Steven Spielberg's historical drama in the running for Lewis' finest work. Well, it's neither of these. Daniel Day Lewis' best film is, in fact, 1985's "A Room With a View," — at least according to Rotten Tomatoes.

The website that determined there to be only two perfect horror movies can also be consulted for its rankings of individual actors' filmographies. This has resulted in the definitely correct revelation that Sean Connery's finest film is "Darby O'Gill and the Little People." Now, it's Gene Hackman's turn to have a lifetime of acting ability summed up by a series of cartoon splats and tomatoes. What could possibly be at the top of this list? Well, my money was on "The French Connection" but I have once again been proven wrong by the all-knowing Tomatometer, which has bestowed only one "perfect" RT score on Hackman in his six-decade-long career.

That 100% rating belongs to "I Never Sang for My Father." The 1970 drama is an adaptation of the 1968 play of the same name and follows Gene Garrison (Hackman), a 40-year-old college professor who has never been close with his father, Tom (Melvyn Douglas), and struggles to find any kind of reconciliation with him even after the death of his mother, ultimately leaving the old boy behind for a new life in California. For his performance in "I Never Sang for My Father," Hackman won the Oscar for Best Actor in a Supporting Role. But surely the most prestigious prize is this "perfect" RT rating.

There are currently 10 reviews on the Rotten Tomatoes page for "I Never Sang for my Father," two of which only two count as "Top Critic" reviews. These two come from The Daily Telegraph's Margaret Hinxman and Roger Ebert himself, who evidently thought the film made "a poignant and ultimately tragic statement about parents and children, life and death, and all the words that go unspoken." Hinxman, meanwhile, praised Gilbert Cates' "discreet" direction and the performances, singling out Gene Hackman's turn "as the son whose father has never treated him as other than a backward boy."

All of which is great for the film, but when you look into its theatrical debut a little more you'll find that not all critics were impressed by Cates' drama. The New York Times' Vincent Canby, for example, had some frankly bizarre thoughts on the film, none of which were very positive. Take this extract from his review:

"Many people, I suspect, are drawn to give lip service to this sort of thing because the basic situation, though badly handled, is valid, and the movie is 'nice,' meaning that it contains no rapes, incest, nudity, murder or violence. But is that really enough? I don't think so."

What do any of the acts mentioned in this quote have to do with anything? Well, that remains a mystery, but the point is that Canby wasn't a fan, and if his review was counted in Rotten Tomatoes' aggregation, "I Never Sang for My Father" would not hold a "perfect" score.

The fact that "I Never Sang for My Father" has a perfect score based on ten reviews, but would immediately drop a few percentage points if Rotten Tomatoes aggregated all the reviews that were actually available online, should tell you something about how seriously to take these "perfect" scores. Often, the percentage you see is based on only a handful of critic's opinions, and it's very rare for a film to have a 100% RT score and be supported by dozens of legitimate reviews. As you'll see if you visit the page for "I Never Sang for My Father," the film has missed out on the "Certified Fresh" rating because RT simply hasn't collected enough articles for it to meet the "at least five Top Critic reviews" threshold.

A good example of the flimsiness of these percentages is Alfred Hitchcock. His 1951 effort "Strangers on a Train," is widely thought to be an underrated Hitchcock movie more than worthy of more attention, but it's currently missing out on the 100% rating simply because of New York Times reviewer Bosley Crowthers' negative review. So too is the undisputed classic "Rear Window." Meanwhile, the lesser-known "Young and Innocent" currently enjoys a "perfect" ranking on the site.

All of which is to say that a "perfect" RT score isn't necessarily a good indication of the prevailing consensus on a director or actor's body of work, and really doesn't tell you much beyond the fact that the reviews collected by the site are all positive, whether they come from just two or 200 critics.