Most undeservingly overhyped movie of all time??

Am I Missing Something?

It's not great by any means, but it's a pretty good movie that didn't leave me filled with regret for investing time in it.

This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

I've seen this movie only a few times, 4-5 throughout, I'd say. I loved how Matthau played serious in this. It's probably the only unfunny Matthau film I've seen, and this is definitely no comedy. This 70's film, with it's hard feel and vibe, is uniquely intriguing. Some nutter boards a bus, shoots down 8 people, one a police detective friend of cop, Matthau's. At the start this then alive detective was tailing some old guy, as I can remember, where obviously this has a bearing on his demise, otherwise the scene wouldn't be included in the film. What I loved, in this film, where about every exterior shot was shot in sunny weather, was the pairing of Matthau, and his new partner Dern, where he proves looks aren't everything, if you can act. Dern, playing tough here, who tends to infer violence if his suspects don't co-operate almost stole the show. One scene, has him getting into a confrontational scene with other cop, Lou Gossett Jnr, and he ever so smoothly backs down, provided a cool moment. We take the journey with Dern (who almost shared Matthau's dead partner's build, though the dead guy was better looking) and the gum chewing Matthau to find the cause of this slaughter. When questioning a pimp, as Matthau leaves, we hear a ho mumble "Pig". Matthau stops, looks around with angry intent. There's a couple of these unnerving moments from this actor's character, and it's not just in his work, though Dern came off better acting wise in this good solid crime flick, that will having you guessing why, where it's answer, will kind of thrown you into a one eighty, where you the viewer, have been really duped. We learn things about the dead cop, like how he was a bit of a creep, into things, other cops didn't know about, where some realizations start to surface. That's what makes a good crime thriller, though it doesn't have the logical of motives for the slaughter. Near it's end, if losing more faith as we do through the film to finding the killer and his reasons, our two hot shots resort to setting up this suspected killer in the same scenario as in the start. Another exhausting scene has Matthau and Dern climbing flights of steps to interrogate someone, where they stop mid flight to take a breather. Paul Koslo, again plays another loser character, who provides some info, who when questioned, has a tendency to smile all the time, and is not big on straight talk.

A portrait of swinging San Francisco in the 1970's with a gloomy and uncomfortable detective investigating a mass murder, this opens well, but by the end has fallen pretty far. Reflecting mainstream America's discomfort at the time, most of Frisco's inhabitants are weird and sleazy, and the detectives by voice and acting show their hatred for the job and society. Matthau has job and family problems, and the family matters are a loose end that is never resolved by the film's end, nor is Dern's relationship with nurse. What's an even greater flaw is that the villain never says a word throughout the film. We hear Matthau rage about him, we see him hanging out in gay bars (to indicate his moral degeneracy), but not a single word of dialog passes his lips. It's like Matthau is swinging at smoke.

This is a somewhat interesting film about two policemen, Walter Mathau and Bruce Dern, trying to solve a mass murder where one of the victims was Mathau's partner.The story starts out pretty good. A cop tails a man onto a bus in San Francisco one night. Along the route, another man boards the bus and moves all the way to the back. A few minutes later, he stands up and starts spraying the bus with a machine gun. He kills everyone and then walks away after the bus crashes into some bushes. Mathau arrives at the scene and discovers his partner was the cop who was tailing somebody.The evidence takes the police on a scenic journey through San Francisco's underbelly - drugs, prostitution, drag queens, sex parlors, the whole works. It was probably risqué at the time, but it's a bit tame by contemporary standards.There's a problem with the editing of this film. Some scenes are included for shock value, while scenes that could have moved the story along are omitted. At times it's hard to follow what's going on with the film jumping around a lot.The dialog is pretty dated too - Lou Gossett's especially. But Walter Mathau's performance as a rumpled detective working the case while his home life falls apart makes this film worthwhile. Bruce Dern's character is so irritable that it's hard to like him, but I suppose that's what the director wanted. Anthony Zerbe is the best of a mediocre supporting cast.The film is good entertainment and worth watching for Mathau and the San Francisco scenery alone. And you'll get a few laughs at all the long hair and period attire.

Of the books in the Martin Beck series, this and Roseanna are the best at describing a lengthy police investigation, one in which it seems as if no progress is being made. As I recall, the killer was an important businessman trying to cover up the long ago, extremely brutal murder of a young woman. The cop who was killed on the bus had taken up the case in what today we call 'a cold case file.' This version repeats a bit of this,but from there it veers off into San Francisco, homosexuals, a laughing Bruce Dern ~~in the book, 'The Laughing Policeman' is the title of an ancient phonograph record~~, and the bonding between two detectives, a theme worn to death in later movies.Matthau is properly rumpled, grumpy and unsmiling, but he is not Beck, who is one of the finest characters created in modern detective fiction. As one reviewer notes, the film is a pale "Bullitt' and it is McQueen who could have given us the definitive Beck.The solving of the case in the book was large part teamwork, which we don't see here, and a small part luck. The case hinged on the misidentification of a car....this would be too dull unless it were done on Law and Order....and the work it took to track down the owner years later.The film is gritty and makes us work to connect the dots, but it does not hold a candle to the book. Oddly James Ellroy used the same massacre idea in LA Confidential and when time came to make the film version, Curtis Hanson got it right.