Prime Cut (1972)
Country: US
Technical: col/scope 91m
Director: Michael Ritchie
Cast: Gene Hackman, Lee Marvin, Sissy Spacek
Synopsis:
Old rivals meet head to head when a Chicago troubleshooter is despatched to Kansas to recover withheld funds owed to the Mob by a vast meat marketing - and prostitution and drug trafficking - organisation.
Review:
Subtexts galore in this somewhat grungy gangster flick, sprinkled with rather unpleasant ideas and images. Try old racketeers meet new racketeers, a stand-off in which the Chicago tough guys still prove themselves the real McCoy against the Kansas pretenders, the conflict wonderfully evoked in the visual metonymy of a combine harvest guzzling a car. Then there's the equation of meat with flesh, the drugged girls sold in pig pens in Hackman's barn, an equation the film venerably repudiates only to titillate us with views of nipple, thigh and pubic hair. Finally there's the suggestion of in-breeding whereby the local community resembles something out of The Wicker Man or Straw Dogs, with all the shotgun-wielding henchmen blond, dungareed clones of one another. Marvin pretty much sleeps his way through it, Hackman cackles, but it's worth a viewing for the stout of heart.
Country: US
Technical: col/scope 91m
Director: Michael Ritchie
Cast: Gene Hackman, Lee Marvin, Sissy Spacek
Synopsis:
Old rivals meet head to head when a Chicago troubleshooter is despatched to Kansas to recover withheld funds owed to the Mob by a vast meat marketing - and prostitution and drug trafficking - organisation.
Review:
Subtexts galore in this somewhat grungy gangster flick, sprinkled with rather unpleasant ideas and images. Try old racketeers meet new racketeers, a stand-off in which the Chicago tough guys still prove themselves the real McCoy against the Kansas pretenders, the conflict wonderfully evoked in the visual metonymy of a combine harvest guzzling a car. Then there's the equation of meat with flesh, the drugged girls sold in pig pens in Hackman's barn, an equation the film venerably repudiates only to titillate us with views of nipple, thigh and pubic hair. Finally there's the suggestion of in-breeding whereby the local community resembles something out of The Wicker Man or Straw Dogs, with all the shotgun-wielding henchmen blond, dungareed clones of one another. Marvin pretty much sleeps his way through it, Hackman cackles, but it's worth a viewing for the stout of heart.
Country: US
Technical: col/scope 91m
Director: Michael Ritchie
Cast: Gene Hackman, Lee Marvin, Sissy Spacek
Synopsis:
Old rivals meet head to head when a Chicago troubleshooter is despatched to Kansas to recover withheld funds owed to the Mob by a vast meat marketing - and prostitution and drug trafficking - organisation.
Review:
Subtexts galore in this somewhat grungy gangster flick, sprinkled with rather unpleasant ideas and images. Try old racketeers meet new racketeers, a stand-off in which the Chicago tough guys still prove themselves the real McCoy against the Kansas pretenders, the conflict wonderfully evoked in the visual metonymy of a combine harvest guzzling a car. Then there's the equation of meat with flesh, the drugged girls sold in pig pens in Hackman's barn, an equation the film venerably repudiates only to titillate us with views of nipple, thigh and pubic hair. Finally there's the suggestion of in-breeding whereby the local community resembles something out of The Wicker Man or Straw Dogs, with all the shotgun-wielding henchmen blond, dungareed clones of one another. Marvin pretty much sleeps his way through it, Hackman cackles, but it's worth a viewing for the stout of heart.