Critics Have Chosen Dustin Hoffman’s Best Movie And It Isn’t Rain Main
Dustin Hoffman's starring role in the film adaptation of Death of a Salesman scored a perfect 100% on Rotten Tomatoes.
Dustin Hoffman is one of the most prolific and successful actors on the screen today, known for his unique characters in films such as The Graduate, Tootsie, and All The President’s Men. He has a lot of hits on his filmography that reaches back to the early 1960s, most of which you can find with better-than-average scores on Rotten Tomatoes. He only has one that reaches the perfect score of 100, and it isn’t the Tom Cruise film Rain Man or the Robin Williams film Hook; instead, it is the 1985 film Death of a Salesman.
The film follows the titular salesman, William “Willy” Loman (Dustin Hoffman), who sells an unknown product and begins to recount his life through different eras. His wife, Linda (Kate Reid), supports and believes in him, although she begins to think that her husband is contemplating suicide. When Biff Loman (John Malkovich) tells his father that he wants to start his own business, Willy commits suicide by intentionally crashing his car so Biff can use his life insurance money for the business.
Dustin Hoffman’s first big success was when he played the titular role of Ben Braddock in The Graduate in 1968; who falls in love with Elaine Robinson and her mother, the seductive Mrs. Robinson. His next hit put him alongside the legendary Jon Voight in Midnight Cowboy in 1970, Lenny in 1975, Kramer v. Kramer in 1980, Tootsie in 1983, Rain Man in 1989, and Wag the Dog in 1998. He received an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor for all of these performances and took it home twice in Kramer v. Kramer with the iconic Meryl Streep and Rain Man with the always charismatic Tom Cruise.
With all the accolades that Dustin Hoffman received in those early years of his career, none of them broke the top four films on his Rotten Tomatoes score, as those are made up of The Meyerowitz Stories with Ben Stiller and Adam Sandler coming it with 93%. Then All the President’s Men about the Watergate Scandal starring Robert Redford, with 94%, Little Big Man, where he plays a 121-year-old Old West personality talking about his past, with 96%, and finally, the perfect 100% in Death of a Salesman.
The adaptation of the play earned Dustin Hoffman more accolades as he picked up the win for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited Series or Movie at the Primetime Emmy Awards, where the film also picked up 14 more nods at the Golden Globes and the Emmy Awards. The film also starred Stephen Lang (Avatar) and Kate Reid (Dallas), who also starred in the stage version of the film.
Dustin Hoffman has a number of excellent performances under his belt that include the films today’s audiences may be more familiar with in movies like Hook and Meet the Fockers. But out of all of those films, none were able to reach the elusive perfect score on Rotten Tomatoes. The only one that was able to capture that honor is the 1985 adaptation from Broadway, Death of a Salesman.
