Directly — 2 From the very beginning of this tape, I saw references to another, earlier picture with Eliott Gould – “Straight” by Richard Rush. Again, we face the fiery napalm of the seventies, the critique of stability, and the bet on personal rebellion. From the very first minutes it becomes clear that the main character simply has nowhere to go – after experiments in the US army, he really lost a lot. And even if such a plot collapse is presented extremely sarcastically, it is difficult not to see in such a turn a harsh reflection of the Vietnam war.
However, the line associated with the US army is not the toughest. Most of all, it goes to the “evil streets”. It is there that we encounter many different people who simply have no place in a “decent life.” So they go for crimes. Ted Post famously notes that it takes just an accident to blow everything up. And indeed, the tension is so strong that an ordinary bank robbery seems an attack on the country.
Such a powerful critical pressure could be exhausting, so the director tries to dilute all this with gags and other absurdities. And when everything boils down to an incomprehensible homage to “This insane insane insane world,” what happens on the screen does not determine anything at all. The most important thing has been said before.
6 out of 10