James Handy, the character actor we watched in dozens of films without always knowing his name, has been killed at 81 in Los Angeles. He was found unconscious on the lawn outside his partner's home, with a stab wound to the chest, and died in hospital. He leaves behind five decades of career - and an ending unlike any film he appeared in.

His face was familiar even when his name wasn't. He turned up in "Jumanji," "Arachnophobia," "Unbreakable," "Logan," and his last role was an older bartender named Jimmy in 2022's "Top Gun: Maverick." From the seventies on he often played police officers and men of authority - precisely the kind of supporting roles that hold a film together and rarely get the applause.

The suspect is Michael Gledhill, the 44-year-old son of Handy's partner, who lived in his mother's home. On Wednesday he called the emergency line with a sentence that sounds straight out of a thriller: "I'm the man's son. I just killed a man on the property." He then approached officers near the crime scene and identified himself as the one they were looking for.

Police describe the case as an isolated incident with no clear motive. Gledhill is charged with first-degree murder and, if convicted, faces up to 26 years in prison. No motive, no logic, just an old man dead on his lawn and a sentence that makes no sense - sometimes reality is crueler than any screenplay, precisely because it refuses to explain why.