This drug-smuggling caper is on the glib and pretentious side. The war in Vietnam, the cowardice of the intelligentsia, the crookedness of crime fighters, the mush-headed escapism of drug users, and the general climate of paranoia -- these things are all advanced as basic truths about the American Way and as irrefutable proofs that the country has gone to the dogs. They go so unexamined and unsubstantiated, however, that they seem to be at best platitudes and at worst old wives' tales. The characters, all of whom are morally reprehensible in different degrees, keep volunteering pithy explanations of why they do what they do, but they seldom make any sense. Still, the whole movie is played with such a compelling sense of urgency that it pulls you along in spite of your many good reasons for balking. (Any lingering ill feelings about the movie are pretty well cancelled out in the last twenty minutes, when Hank Snow's irresistible "Golden Rocket" is played on the soundtrack three times, including during the climactic shootout.) There are numerous triumphs of verisimilitude, especially with regard to the brutal speech and manner of aggressively masculine types -- GIs, street-smart hardguys, goons. For exposing masculine vanity at its most pitiful, it would be hard to top the scene in which a squirrelly professional gunman, who has no idea how he appears to others, with his lisp and his jittery knee, confides that he hopes someday to become an FBI agent. The film's vague sense of realism, which comes in and out of focus like a distant radio signal, is most often obliterated by careless presumption, by caricature, and by Richard Kline's lacquered, stickily atmospheric image. With Nick Nolte, Tuesday Weld, Michael Moriarty, and Anthony Zerbe; directed by Karel Reisz. (1978) — Duncan Shepherd
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