Despite Bill Murray's reputation as a freewheeling comedian who loves nothing more than to crash unsuspecting civilians' engagement photo shoots and bachelor parties, there's more to the 66-year-old star than just cooler-than-cool ridiculousness. For every Stripes, Ghostbusters, and Groundhog Day, there are at least three other Murray gems that don't get the respect they deserve, in large part because they're not necessarily the biggest, best comedies of the past 30 years.

The Razor's Edge (1984)

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In the same year that he got slimed with ectoplasm, Murray took on his first serious dramatic role in John Byrum's adaptation of W. Somerset Maugham's 1944 novel The Razor's Edge. As an upper-cruster who joins the army as an ambulance driver in WWI and returns home discontent with everything, sending him on a quest for self-definition in Paris and India, Murray has a detached reservation that's in keeping with his character's inner confusion and isolation. While he shines during the occasionally humorous moments, it's the hollow, far-off look in his eyes — and the sense that he's not quite there anymore — that truly sells the performance, and marks it as the first indication of Murray's adeptness at marrying silliness and somberness.

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Quick Change (1990)

Co-directed by Murray, 1990's Quick Change is the single most underrated comedic performance of the star's career. In this hilarious heist film, a bank robbery — pulled off by Murray (in a clown suit), Geena Davis, and Randy Quaid — goes off swimmingly, but the trio's attempts to escape Manhattan for the airport prove farcically arduous. Faced with a non-stop stream of real-world obstacles, Murray gets flustered, acts out, and generally behaves like you'd imagine Bill Murray might in such a situation. There's nothing groundbreaking about the role, but the film's canny construction is ideally suited to Murray's instincts, and provides him with opportunities for all sorts of foolishness.

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Hamlet (2000)

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Far from a Shakespearean thespian, Bill Murray nonetheless almost steals the show in Michael Almereyda's superb modern update of Hamlet. Relocated to Manhattan, where Hamlet (Ethan Hawke) is a film student in line to take over Denmark Corporation, Almereyda's adaptation features Murray as Polonius. With an exhaustion seemingly born from a life that has taught him that the jokes are always on us, Murray achieves a level of sorrowful grandeur that no other role has ever quite afforded him — no surprise, given the peerless material with which he's working. In particular, his speech to his son Laertes (Liev Schreiber) is a subdued tour-du-force.

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Coffee and Cigarettes (2003)

Jim Jarmusch's Coffee and Cigarettes is a black-and-white omnibus film whose 11 vignettes are all linked by the recurring motifs of cups of joe and smokes. In each short, characters sit around and agreeably disagree with each other, and none is funnier than "Delirium," which finds the Wu-Tang Clan's RZA and GZA at a diner, where their waiter just happens to be Bill Murray. Or, as GZA puts it, "Bill Groundhog-Day-Ghostbusting-Ass Murray!" As RZA and GZA expound on the dangers of dairy and the benefits of herbal tea, Murray shows up to serve them some coffee, and to guzzle straight from the carafe. Wearing a paper hat and a matching smock, he proceeds to discuss the delirium too much caffeine causes him, as well as the smoker's cough he's got, all while his hip-hop buddies give him some helpful medical advice. Absurdist through and through, it's Murray at his most casually, amusingly laid-back.

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Broken Flowers (2005)

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Two years after Coffee and Cigarettes, Murray reunited with Jarmusch for his own starring feature, Broken Flowers. Mining a vein of deep, mournful regret, Murray stars as a former ladies' man who receives an anonymous letter in the mail informing him that he has a son, and responds by embarking on a cross-country quest to visit four former lovers, each of whom might be the kid's mother. It's a role that allows Murray to use his sad-sack attitude for consistent dry laughs while also pinpointing remorse and pain as one of the great sources of his comedy.

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Nick Schager Nick Schager is a NYC-area film critic and culture writer with twenty years of professional experience writing about all the movies you love, and countless others that you don’t.

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