Jack Lemmon won a best actor Academy Award as Harry Stoner, a middle-aged businessman whose business(a struggling apparel company) is severely in debt, with accounts being canceled, forcing Harry to degrade himself by pimping prostitutes for the salesmen. He finally agrees to see a professional arsonist, who will burn down the building so that he can collect the insurance money. The fact that it will also affect another business in the building is just too bad...besides, they're insured too, or so that's what Harry tells himself. He finds himself thinking about the past more, as he drifts into an affair with a young hippie girl.
Lemmon is excellent, but also the whole show in this otherwise dreary and hollow film, that just doesn't have much dramatic impact, and wallows in seediness too much. Ending is also unsatisfying, and inconclusive.
Lemmon is excellent, but also the whole show in this otherwise dreary and hollow film, that just doesn't have much dramatic impact, and wallows in seediness too much. Ending is also unsatisfying, and inconclusive.