jakew-53484

Coppola is often a filmmaker thought of as having a particular golden period from 1972-1979. I don't think that's true. It started sooner than that. It started here.

This film is incredible. It's strikingly bold and unconventional even still today. With a limited budget, Coppola was able to create a film that felt raw, authentic and genuine. A lot of this is down to the cast. Shirley Knight does a great job of making a character who isn't always as likable as you would expect the lead of a movie to be always feel understandable and human. Knight is truly a marvelous actor who never really got her due. But the real star here is the late great James Caan, who delivers a powerhouse performance here. Perhaps ranking alongside Thief as one of his finest performances. It's a character that as written could come off as very annoying. But not once is Caan anything less than endearing. Truly an amazing character.

In his first of many collaborations with Coppola, Robert Duvall shows up and, well, he's Robert Duvall. Nothing less than perfection. But it's Coppola here who really shines. Now with some experience under his belt to give him confidence and out from under the oppressive thumb that held him down on Finian's Rainbow, Coppola shows what a rare sort of genius he is. His method of incorporating settings into the film as he comes across them never comes off as strange or out of place at all. And there's a sense of realism to this piece that isn't there in anything else that Coppola did before or after. It's just such a genuinely human tale that balances it's (at the time) experimental stylings with the tender performances. This was Coppola's first great masterpiece, and is a much watch for any cinefile.

Just awful. A disastrous production. No one is done justice here. Not Warner Bros. Not Coppola. And certainly not Astaire. This was one of the last attempts to hold on to a type of film that was falling out of fashion while the film industry was on the precipice of a great change. And as such it serves as nothing more than a red mark on the brilliant careers of Coppola and Astaire. Skip this.

This is a perfectly entertaining little movie. If you're a Richard Lester fan, you probably enjoy this (although it's not as good as Lester's best). The best thing here is the cast. All of the actors are great and know exactly how to play what kind of roles their in. Another great thing is the soundtrack provided by Lovin' Spoonful. Fun songs that set the mood of the picture well. It is interesting the ways in which this film proceeds The Graduate in term of it's subject matter. However, at this point, Coppola simply did not command his craft as a writer or a director enough to give the story what it needed to become truly special, as Nichols would a year later.