Synopsis: Vietnam vet and friends try to track down killer
Director: Ivan Passer
Actors: Jeff Bridges, John Heard, Lisa Eichhorn
Date: 1981
How viewed: Lovefilm rental
Rating: 5/5
David Meyer says:
Everything in the film .. is soaked in ambiguity. Credit the many simultaneous moods of the screenplay, which manages to be spellbinding, funny, bitter, hopeful, and tragic without ever becoming self-important or manipulative.
I say:
Yet another film of which I had little expectations. Another film I recall seeing around the time it came out, which had not lodged in my brain as anything noteworthy. Another film that arrived from Lovefilm and sat around for a week or more. And yet, and yet, another film which turned out to be a minor (perhaps even a major) classic. On the surface it's about 2 friends (Bone, a Californian drifter, and Cutter, his disfigured (1-eye, 1-arm, 1-leg) Vietnam veteran) obsessively tracking down and trying to prove the guilt of the local bigwig oilman who they suspect has killed a girl. On a deeper level I think it's about the post Vietnam, post hippy, post equality era, where the rich have taken over and can do what they want, and the poor are looking for someone to blame. It seems remarkably modern (apart from Bridges' moustache!), the performances are great (especially Heard's), the dialogue fizzes, and the tension builds. Possibly the best film I've seen in this trawl through 101 films. However looking at the reviews people either love it or hate it - when it was re-released a couple of years ago, the Guardian's John Patterson admitted he'd watched it around 30 times, that it might be his favourite American film, and called it a masterpiece. Not sure about that, but it's certainly up there!
Yet another film of which I had little expectations. Another film I recall seeing around the time it came out, which had not lodged in my brain as anything noteworthy. Another film that arrived from Lovefilm and sat around for a week or more. And yet, and yet, another film which turned out to be a minor (perhaps even a major) classic. On the surface it's about 2 friends (Bone, a Californian drifter, and Cutter, his disfigured (1-eye, 1-arm, 1-leg) Vietnam veteran) obsessively tracking down and trying to prove the guilt of the local bigwig oilman who they suspect has killed a girl. On a deeper level I think it's about the post Vietnam, post hippy, post equality era, where the rich have taken over and can do what they want, and the poor are looking for someone to blame. It seems remarkably modern (apart from Bridges' moustache!), the performances are great (especially Heard's), the dialogue fizzes, and the tension builds. Possibly the best film I've seen in this trawl through 101 films. However looking at the reviews people either love it or hate it - when it was re-released a couple of years ago, the Guardian's John Patterson admitted he'd watched it around 30 times, that it might be his favourite American film, and called it a masterpiece. Not sure about that, but it's certainly up there!
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