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The "bad management" at the bottom of Seventies paranoia, a tale of East and West. Sam Peckinpah's name appears in the credits as a momma bird feeds its hatchlings, the first section follows as a stream of macho razzing between agents from a shadowy agency of eliminators. ("The thought that the CIA might employ such an organization for any purpose is, of course, preposterous," assures the opening crawl.) The joshing about vaginal infections and duck fucking is interrupted by the defection of the renegade assassin (Robert Duvall), who retires his pal (James Caan) with a pair of strategically placed bullets. Ford's The Wings of Eagles for the regeneration, Humpty Dumpty put back together with a yen for martial-arts. Changing times, "the cleft chins and the true hearts are out," Wyatt Earp and Tom Mix are sagging allusions. Bo Hopkins as the grinning marksman and Burt Young as the voice of slobby integrity, just the team for Caan's avenging jock. "Will that give you back your knee and your elbow?" "No, no. But wherever they are, I know they'll be a lot happier." From within the hackiest of potboilers, Peckinpah cleans house. "Goddamn power systems" have their part to play in the mirror structure, complete with company suits (Arthur Hill, Gig Young) as reflections of the dueling partners. (Young's ravaged visage is used throughout as a sell-out emblem: "My father was a minister, that's what he wanted me to be," he muses to a blunt "Who cares?") Slack and concentrated, dead-serious and private-joke wacky, an abstruse meditation on independence and irrelevance all the way to the ninja melee on the mothballed battleship. "It's in the manner of living and dying..." Siegel's Charley Varrick is closely related, The Osterman Weekend a withering continuation. Cinematography by Philip Lathrop. With Mako, Tiana Alexandra, Kate Heflin, Sondra Blake, George Cheung, and Helmut Dantine.
--- Fernando F. Croce |