This was the maiden directorial effort from Michale Cimino (The Deer Hunter), who also wrote the script, and the film featured a young Oscar-nominated Jeff Bridges and Clint Eastwood in the prime of his career.

Despite those credentials, it isn't all that good. It's a buddy film that doesn't quite click

Director Cimino didn't have the skills yet to portray the robbery that had to be pulled off in exactly seven minutes. He didn't know how to convey the urgency felt by the characters when presented with distractions. He seems to have mis-cut the film so that scenes seem to be missing, and characters seem to be introduced and left hanging. And the tone seems all inconsistent. First it's an escapist caper flick. Then it's a gritty cops-and-robbers film with betrayals and shootouts. Then it's a buddy picture. Or it's a broad comedy. Or it's a slice of gritty realism. It couldn't decide.

I have to admit that George Kennedy and his buddy were hilarious in the ice cream wagon. You see, the four criminals decide to pull off a massive bank heist, but they have no money to buy the equipment they need. So they all take jobs to raise some dough. Well not all of them. George Kennedy refuses to take a job, but he rides with his buddy in their little ice cream scooter in a moment of very broad comedy, and at one point he tells a smart-ass kid to "fuck a duck".

Although this was funny, it was not really consistent with the tone of the rest of the movie. For example, the final scene involves the death of the third of the four partners, a car driving through the rolling Montana hills, with the cinematography conveying the endless and empty nature of the hills,and the loneliness of it all, reinforced by a sad song from Paul Williams. Not exactly wacky Jim Carrey material, eh?

By the way, they manage to make enough money at their minimum wage jobs to buy an anti-tank gun, which you can see in one of the collages.

Does that make sense to you? If so, explain it to me, because I don't know how they could earn that much selling Good Humor products in a short time on desolate streets, and even if they had the cash, I don't know where how they'd get an anti-tank gun in rural Montana.

So, I think the movie is pretty slow and sometimes confusing, the direction is uneconomical and the tone inconsistent. Having said that, I can't let you go without saying that the film has some plusses, especially in the magnificent shots of the countryside, and the interaction of the four main characters, all four of whom were written well and performed interestingly. The "buddy" part of the picture worked well, I thought.

You could see Cimino's potential, but it was raw and unpolished. I think the movie is worth watching, but looking at the Apollo and IMDb comments and ratings, I'd say the film is probably overrated.

The DVD is not good quality. It does preserve the original 2.35 aspect ratio, but the colors are washed out toward green, and there are no significant bonus features except the original trailer. I don't recommend it at all. Worth a rental, but don't own it.

IMDB summary: 6.8 out of 10.

DVD info from Amazon

A big sprawling slice-of-life movie with a very irregular structure. Basically just a couple of days in the lives of 24 characters who form a representative sampling of life in Nashville. Robert Altman directed this slice of Americana, using Nashville as a metaphor for the way Americans started dreaming about things that weren't that important, while anger and malaise snuck deep into our lives.

Altman's star was assured with this film, which was the subject of one of the most famous reviews ever written, the encomium in which Pauline Kael, the learned New York critic, not only declared Altman a candidate for canonization, but argued to release the full six hour version that Altman preferred.

I'll tell you what, though. I am severely disappointed that the long version is NOT included in the DVD. For 25 years I've been wondering about that long version, and I'm still curious about it.

A lot of the satirical bite of this film is lost today. This film was started during the Watergate crisis, finished slightly after Nixon's resignation, and Altman was a new left type thinker. At the time, there was a starkly apparent contrast between the characters in this film and the direction in which America was moving. Nashville and its denizens were obvious anachronisms in the context of Watergate and Vietnam. All that context is lost now, and much of the film's edge with it. Kael considered it to be a hilarious satire, but it doesn't work as well without the common understandings of 1975. (One line is still hilarious. A smarmy faux-patriotic country star played by Henry Gibson finds that Eliot Gould (playing himself) is at his party - in his most rhetorical tones, he says "welcome, sir, to Nashville and my lovely home" (Imagine it in Henry Gibson's voice)

By the way, the DVD does include a full-length commentary by Altman, and that is pretty much worth the price of admission. If you are a film buff, I reckon you'll want to hear his thoughts. Many people, not just Kael, consider this a great masterpiece.

I don't. I think it's deeply flawed, rambling, often boring. Some characterizations are excellent, and the film has some great moments, but they are only moments, and never form a cohesive whole that I can see. Tuna was right, by the way, there are far too many characters to develop, and too many of them are left hanging in the middle of a story, often without much development, almost universally with no closure. I was left wondering what happened to the stories I was interested in, and wondering why the hell they included the other stories at all. (Karen Black's character, for example, seemed to have no purpose other than for Karen to sing a few songs, which she did quite well. Jeff Goldblum's character seemed to have no purpose, period. In fact, I don't think he had any lines.) So maybe Kael was right. maybe they should have released the six hour version .

I liked the movie more in 1975, when I understood all the attitudinal assumptions, but as I remember, I didn't think it was a great masterpiece then, either, just an interesting film with an experimental structure which I kinda liked.

One interesting bit of trivia. There is more than an hour of singing in this movie, and most of the songs were actually written by the actors who performed them! The film probably has more singing than most musicals. Keith Carradine played a Jim Croce-like folk singer, and his "I'm Easy", won the best song Oscar.

Lily Tomlin was probably the best thing in the movie. She looked good, I liked her character and she brought great style to it, but the woman should have not attempted singing. It comes out as an awful screeching sound that makes Shatner sound like Mario Fucking Lanza. (Luckily, she was pretty much covered up by a professional gospel choir.)

As always with the early Altman films, very creative opening credits! Probably my favorite thing in the movie.

IMDB summary: 7.8 out of 10, about the same as Altman's M.A.S.H..

DVD info from Amazon

Sound Track info from Amazon