Trying a little too hard to be "Bonnie And Clyde" (with a soupcon of "Little Big Man" thrown in) and not making it, for the main and simple reason that Robert Benton is not as good a director as Arthur Penn. Still, for a directorial debut it's not bad, with sequences that still manage to shock and be touching like the sudden death of the youngest member of the eponymous company for the heinous offense of stealing a pie left to warm on a window sill. Or the scene by the camp fire where Jeff Bridges' confused and vulnerable outlaw/outcast remembers his mom and Barry Brown's equally befuddled miscreant espouses the virtue of chastity, all to the accompaniment of passages from "Jane Eyre".
Unfortunately, there are too many set pieces in the film that did not affect this viewer, scenes that must have looked good on paper (Benton co wrote the screenplay along with his B/C writing partner, David Newman) but which fall flat when played out on screen, such as the rabbit skinning scene with its unconvincing assertion that these farm boys would be nauseous at the sight of a bloody hare and the sudden transformation of a hard bitten, busted plains farmer and wife into a scheming pimp and ho as if Benton is holding a sign aloft which proclaims "Capitalist Frontier Wasteland". And the whole climactic shootout lacks only the slo mo and the banjo/guitar riffs to let you know that Benton has been off borrowing from Penn instead of creating his own look and feel.
Still, let's end on a high, if elegiac, note which centers on the general excellence of the acting, particularly the two leads and of those two leads let's single out Barry Brown for special mention since in six years he would be a victim of substance abuse and suicide. Gotta think he would have had, at the very least, a very solid career.
Give it a B minus.
PS...Gordon Willis, taking a vacation from NYC, ironically makes the plains appear as solemn and dark as Don Corleone's living room.
Unfortunately, there are too many set pieces in the film that did not affect this viewer, scenes that must have looked good on paper (Benton co wrote the screenplay along with his B/C writing partner, David Newman) but which fall flat when played out on screen, such as the rabbit skinning scene with its unconvincing assertion that these farm boys would be nauseous at the sight of a bloody hare and the sudden transformation of a hard bitten, busted plains farmer and wife into a scheming pimp and ho as if Benton is holding a sign aloft which proclaims "Capitalist Frontier Wasteland". And the whole climactic shootout lacks only the slo mo and the banjo/guitar riffs to let you know that Benton has been off borrowing from Penn instead of creating his own look and feel.
Still, let's end on a high, if elegiac, note which centers on the general excellence of the acting, particularly the two leads and of those two leads let's single out Barry Brown for special mention since in six years he would be a victim of substance abuse and suicide. Gotta think he would have had, at the very least, a very solid career.
Give it a B minus.
PS...Gordon Willis, taking a vacation from NYC, ironically makes the plains appear as solemn and dark as Don Corleone's living room.