Better Late Then Never

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

It is a whirlwind of delight --- attractive actors, stunning couture, spectacular sets and outrageous parties.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

If I could give this thing a zero, I would. Given the incredible cast, it's beyond belief that they came up with a movie this bad. When this came on TV, my friend said, "No, don't watch it!" That made me curious, so I was stupid enough to stay up until some ungodly hour of the morning to finish watching it. I kept thinking it would have some kind of redeeming social value in the end. I was wrong. I literally wanted to blow my brains out after watching it. So...if you'd like to commit suicide, by all means watch it. If, on the other hand, you'd like to have a good day, turn around and run away.

John Barry's music and Maurice Binder's credits sequence belong in a far better film than this overripe and putrid melodrama. The less said about anyone else's contribution - which all must have been embarrassed to acknowledge was the lowest point in their respective careers - the better. "All those people are crazy" as the Sheriff says (the only meaningful line of dialogue in the entire farrago). And, really, who wants to spend over two hours in the lunatic asylum of this cheap and pointless Hollywood degradation? Nowhere in this sprawling mess is there the slightest whiff of real human pain - except probably burned into the memory of the original audience, who had to sit squirming in endless torment beneath this over-the-top torrent of technicolor naffness. This is no morality - this is a ludicrous caricature of humanity. Cheap and offensive sensationalism. Reductive voyeurism, posturing as cinematic exposure. And worst of all NO PERCEPTIBLE DRAMATIC TENSION OR MORAL CATHARSIS WHATSOEVER. If only there had been any actual alcohol vapours to light up the screen at the fiery end, in an auto-da-fé of the wild unreality of that shambling mass of bad actors who even lacked the taste to avoid being stone cold sober while making themselves ridiculous, as their hopelessly pretend drunks spewed out across the Panavision expanse - - -Then, this rubbish could at last have ended in the blaze of recognition that normally consigns such an awful screenplay to the consuming fire of embarrassed self-knowledge BEFORE wasting time and money in unwisely perpetrating the abomination on the exhibitionist scale of a Panavision epic!A lurid pavement-oyster of a film. Definitely a night-out NOT to remember.(I saw this on Netflix UK - increasingly the purveyors of the most boring catalogue of films and TV programmes available anywhere. Its the sort of cheap date they are picking up too often these days.)

The Chase (1966)I give this movie extra credit for ambition, and for richness of story and complexity. It's a torrid soap opera overall, which is a good thing because it is saved by its romanticized excesses. The title is odd, in a way, because the obvious "chase" here is the pursuit of the convict on the run (played by Robert Redford, and not his best performance). But in a way there are all kinds of other chases here—women and men wanting each other with a whole network of adultery and would-be affairs at play.But never quite shown. This is a movie pushing the end of the censorship code, but the code is still officially in place and so there are still some boundaries, even for a director like Arthur Penn, who would help New Hollywood blossom (notably with "Bonnie and Clyde" the next year). But the steamy background as this small town wrestles with decency, among other things, is great stuff.Decency, as a core idea, is what the main character is all about—the sheriff played by Marlon Brando. Brando is great. He isn't quite the Texas sheriff intended, of course (he's "Brando"), but he has nuance and strength, and he helps his scenes a lot. But the movie is brimming with talent: Robert Duvall, for one. Two women do their parts—Jane Fonda and Angie Dickinson—though neither is given enough to do besides support their male counterparts (Fonda is a kind of "loose woman" and Dickinson is a girlfriend having affairs).But Penn is the biggest talent, pulling together a very complicated story in two hours. Photographer Joseph LaShelle is great, too, one of the masters of early widescreen color in the US. Together they make this movie fluid, beautiful, and constantly demanding in the best way.What holds it back is a little of the superficiality that is so common in early 60s films—it's about sensation and effect, about drama for its own sake. You never quite care about Redford in his run (he's a surprisingly small part of the movie until the end). And even all the other characters working out their prejudices are a bit on the surface.There is a welcome racial theme here, and a generational one (young people utterly selfish and party hungry in this version, and older folk filled with prejudice and greed). I say see this film. There's a lot going on, and I could watch it a second time just for everything I missed.

Despite the talent in front of the camera and behind, the movie amounts to a swollen mess. The script utterly fails in character development, settling instead for brief snatches. As another reviewer points out, there are no close-ups to reveal inner feelings or to ease our identifying the person. The latter is especially troublesome since so many scenes unfold in half-light. Awkward staging doesn't help either, especially the ridiculous crowd scenes, where women flaunt wantonly and men stand drunkenly by. The upper-class decadence is spread on with a shovel.This may have been cutting-edge in 1966, but now it's not only woefully overdone, but plain silly too. Then there's that climactic scene from junkyard hell where our nose gets rubbed in flaming tires. It may provide cinematic spectacle but otherwise adds only to the exaggeration. It's also too bad that a hundred lesser actors could have filled Brando's role, about which he appears understandably detached. At the same time, Dickinson's role as Brando's wife looks like a wasted add-on. Plus, the flaunting slut has got to be the nadir of Janice Rule's otherwise distinguished career. Among the principals, only Redford and Marshall come through unscathed.One interesting note not emphasized in the script-- just what is Bubba's (Redford) crime, deserving of the ending. Looks to me like a tragic occurrence that otherwise goes unexplored. I wish there were something really redeeming about this mess, perhaps that its heart is in the right place racially. But there really isn't much redemptive. Too bad such a fine cast is largely wasted, while the supposed look at Southern decadence amounts more to unfunny parody than anything thoughtful. One positive note-- I'm glad director Penn's career managed a quick recovery from what could have been an industry graveyard. All in all, whatever the offscreen production squabbles, which I guess were real, they sure didn't help what ended up on screen.