Alan Rickman was a master at taking a standard role and elevating it to one which was truly memorable.

The two main examples that come to mind are that of Hans Gruber in Die Hard and the Sheriff of Nottingham in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves.

With Hans Gruber, Rickman takes the "man with an elaborate plan" villain and delivered one of my favorite performances. The delivery of his lines, Gruber's unwavering focus and the visible rage that he displays when McClane interferes with his planning. That one scene in the movie when McClane and Gruber come face to face for the first time and Gruber pretends to be one of the hostages is genius. You can see how hard he is trying to not break the fake character which he is creating for McClane. The tension is palpable. Take Die Hard 2. While it's a solid action movie, I always felt like the villain was pretty weak. Jeremy Irons was better as Simon Gruber, but his performance was nowhere near as iconic as Rickman's.

The latter movie is one which I rewatched after having not seen it for quite some time. While far from perfect I still found it entertaining and had a great time revisiting it. One of the aspects that immediately stood out and inspired me to make this post was Rickman's performance. On paper, the character of the Sheriff is as simplistic as they come. A tyrannical leader who is obsessed with power, serving as a one note villain to oppose the heroic Robin Hood. This is far from what Rickman played in Prince of Thieves. His performance is completely over-the-top and often times almost a caricature of said clichéd villains which I mentioned. I am sure Rickman had a lot of input in the creation of this version of the character and I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of his scenes were improvised. I found myself constantly laughing at just how wild his acting in this movie is.

What a great actor.

Submitted February 21, 2021 at 09:14AM by Schnitzel129 https://ift.tt/3k8ledG