Quintett

Sorry--whatever merits the story about the game may have, this movie really loses it with the details. This post-apocalyptic city seems to have plenty of light bulbs and electricity (where from who knows where), but apparently no one bothered to save an electric heater. I am sorry, but if you have electricity, why do you have to rely solely on fire for warmth? Also, some characters seem to have vaguely Italian accents while the rest are deadpan American.

And the dogs--jeez! Why aren't the people eating them (instead of the reverse)? And apparently only one breed survived. The dogs are a distraction and rather stupid. The movie could have worked on the level of the game, but the stupid "realistic" details were just the reverse and made the movie false and unwatchable.

Quintet marks the only venture of both Paul Newman and director Robert Altman into the realm of science fiction. It was said of Newman that he could not do comedy, but he tried until he finally scored a real success in that genre with Slap Shot. But the failure of this film left him gun shy and he never tried it again.

This is one of the biggest downer films I've ever seen. It's a futuristic ice age, brought on by who knows what, but presumably it's a nuclear winter. Even during the ice age of thousands of years ago, the equatorial parts of the earth still sustained animal and human life, but apparently not here. Seals have survived and Paul Newman is a seal hunter on the outside.

But hunters do need a little R&R and Newman goes to a futuristic city where things are so boring the natives have some kind of game played with six people and it's a kind of Russian roulette. To win you have to kill five other participants in your game.

It's a sad turn to see what man has come down to. Which is one of the reasons I just could not get into this story. The atmosphere is bleak, the story is bleak, the people are bleak, it's all so bleak. No wonder this thing came up short at the box office.

It's a film that just about everyone thinks is never going to be on the top ten list of Paul Newman films, including me.

This is man's future, what a bummer.

I finally have found others who unfortunately saw this ......movie? I did not get it at all. Sure it was post apocalyptic, but could a movie ever have been made so poorly as to leave an entire theater wondering what in the world did we just see? To this day I am still baffled by this ....movie? and have never been able to describe or discuss this film without the words: "worst movie I have ever seen!"

I had never heard of this movie until I saw it in an "obscure sci-fi" list. That was surprising, because it sounded like it was right in my wheel house. I love 70s post-apocalyptic sci-fi, I love Paul Newman, and I love Robert Altman movies.

For the record, I loved Zardoz, which is generally regarded as another high-concept misfire, so I had hopes I would like this one in spite of the suspiciously low Rotten Tomatoes score.

Unfortunately, RT was right. This was just boring and terrible. Basically, an ice age has enveloped the Earth and everyone passes their time playing a game called Quintet - and people get killed over it. That's it; that's the plot.

The whole thing had the feel of a pilot for a TV show that was never picked up. You know, like maybe in the next episode, something interesting would happen. There definitely wasn't enough there to stand on its own.

On top of everything else, it takes itself really seriously, so it even fails in the "so bad it's good" category".

I can't recommend watching this movie for any reason whatsoever.

This is one of the many very good performances by Paul Newman, who was always underrated as an actor because of his all-encompassing beauty. The main problem with this movie, in my opinion, is the huge Vaseline budget they had. The whole movie was shot with Vaseline at the edges of the lens. I find that very annoying. When I make the effort to remember not to be annoyed by that "Vaseline experiment", I find it is not a bad movie by a long shot. The cast is brilliant, the futuristic plot is innovative for the period and the decor is intriguingly apt. The smearing of Vaseline on the lens applied to a whole movie may have been innovative, it was certainly daring, but I, for one, like to be able to look at the part of the screen I choose, and not be forbidden to have a clear look at the edges. CH