Please don't spend money on this.

Great Film overall

The acting in this movie is really good.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

For quite some time, this movie has held a place on my list of quintessential 60s guilty pleasure; it's a mini-super-light heist flick variation on some of the same themes in John Boorman's masterpiece, POINT BLANK - with its consistent visual chronicling of a transient American culture made anonymous by its materialistic-quack preoccupations (and thus,easily vulnerable to chameleon criminality). James Coburn, who plays DEAD HEAT'S hero shares some of Lee Marvin's traits in POINT BLANK. Both men move, mysteriously, like the wind, "beat the system," "win out" as anti-heroes but, in the process,they negate themselves out of existence ( they are, literally, "gone with the wind" at their respective pictures' fade-outs). On this last go-round, having just recently watched it again (via TCM), I'm prepared to give it a less qualified, more hearty endorsement. Writer-director, Bernard Girard makes the best case for modern international airports to be THE stage for absurdist comedy of any film I can think of. It begins with a mock-dramatic monologue by Coburn that keys the unique tongue-in-cheek tone of the film brilliantly and is probably the best acting he ever did on film. Stu Philips' catchy theme music maintains the puckish spirit of the piece in a way that few American movie scores of the 60s ( or movie scores of any other period for that matter) have been able to do as successfully or as memorably.

I saw this film at the cinema in the 1960's and years later, although I had never forgotten the title of the film, I could not remember anything else about it. I decided, therefore, to buy the DVD and pay a long time return visit to this film. In it James Coburn plays a con-man and is at times quite amusing, but I must say, however, that the movie is rather tame and slow and pretty much forgettable. Still it brought back memories of a time now gone, but a time I often wish would return. If you are wanting thrills and excitement, then this film is not for you. However, for those of you who enjoy watching 1960's films then this rather overlooked movie is worth a look.

A great movie to see while knowing nothing much about it. (Stop here if this is you, and watch it!)A marvelous script, and Coburn is fantastic. The rest of the cast does a great job with their material, too. Good to very good direction and good to very good production values.Cute sub-plot, and a nice ironic twist at the very end.This has long been one of my favorite movies.

This film seems to have vanished completely, but if you can find it, it's intriguing. The plot is serviceable, but not dazzlingly original - what is striking is its concept of the central character (James Coburn) as a kind of Nowhere Man, someone who exists only in terms of other people's (mistaken) assumptions about him. We never really find out anything concrete about Eli Kotch, the character in question, beyond the fact that he's an unscrupulous crook - even the name is highly suspect, as Coburn isn't Jewish. Hence, he's able to adopt half-a-dozen disguises in the course of the story (without changing his face once) and is convincing every time. One unfavourable review noted that the film is 107 minutes and 20 seconds long and that the 20 seconds were quite good. Actually, this is truer than the catty critic knew - the twist in the film's tail is dynamite and you really do have to wait until the last moments to get to it. On the merry-go-round of life, Eli Kotch's sins catch up with him and he never even knows it. It's a dead heat all right - on one level, he seems to get away with his crimes, but on another level, he's as big a loser as he deserves to be.