Bad Company

In 1973 my wife and sat in a theater with three other paying guests and six theater workers and watched Bad Company. We were transfixed by the sheer power of this magnificent American drama. Last weekend, with a recently released low speed version of the move, our seventeen-year-old son watched it for the first time and simply said "They should put it back in the theaters!"

This is one of the most overlooked, underrated, forgotten and ignored great films of the last twenty-five years. Acting, story, editing, photography, score - all are right on the money. My eternal thanks to Jaffe and Benton for having the courage of their convictions.

Thrilling story about a group of young people who join forces to be robbers , as they rob their way west but with unexpected consequences . This first-rate Western draws its riveting tale and power from the interaction of finely drawn roles as well as adventure and action . Good and enjoyable western with a great casting and two sensational starring , a very young Jeff Bridges and Barry Brown in a coming-of-age story . This exciting film packs Western action , go riding , thrills , emotion , shoot-outs and results to be quite entertaining . It contains a magnificent main cast as Jeff Bridges and Barry Brown facing off bandits (David Huddleston , Geoffey Lewis , Ed Lauer , among others) a tough sheriff(Jim Davis) and deputies ; in addition , a top-drawer support cast . This is a nice flick containing a little bit of charming humor about naively juvenile , friendship , violence and sense of comradeship among people . It's a sympathetic western , with a beautiful cinematography , attractive scenery from meadows and great soundtrack by piano . It deals with a god-fearing Ohio boy called Drew Dixon (Barry Brown) dodging the Civil War draft arrives in Jefferson City where he joins up with a hardscrabble group of like runaways heading west , being led by Jake Rumsey (Jeff Bridges) , a street-wise rebel . Both of them have wildly differing temperaments . Soon after, though, the drifter young finds out existence on the West is neither what he expected nor what he's been wishing . As the dangerous journey that turns out to be worst than expected , suffering attacks , hard-working activities , robbing , gun-play and many other things .

Formidable as well as intriguing Western full of action , fascinating drama , crossfire and fabulous performances . It's a wonderful adventure film format "western" itinerant, filled with entertaining events , danger and life lessons . This exciting film packs good feeling as friendship , faithfulness , companionship and violence as well as touching scenes on the final . The screenplay , by David Newman , Robert Benton , is plain and simple but intelligent , with a conventional plot , but ultimately gets overcome . The picture belongs to Western sub-genre of the seventies about juvenile people , starred by teens or little boys such as ¨The Spikes gang¨ , ¨Marshal Cahill¨ , ¨The cowboys¨ and ¨The Culpepper Cattle Co¨. Gorgeous outdoors with decent production design by Paul Sylbert . Filmmaker gets to remain the Western emotion , moving scenes and suspense until the ending . The young starring player Barry Brown is very good , his role as an ingenuous and cultured young is top-notch , he performed similar character as a naive cowboy in other films however , he virtually disappeared without much trace until his suicide , as he shot himself to death . He was especially known for Daisy Miller (1974) , Piranha (1978) and this Bad company (1972). Sympathetic Jeff Bridges as gang leader , he steals the show as likable as well as two-fisted young gunslinger . According to Jeff Bridges the gunfight in the forest had to be completely re shot after the film was ruined in the lab . Secondary cast is extraordinary such as John Savage , David Huddleston , Jerry Houser , Jim Davis , Geoffrey Lewis , Jean Allison , Ed Lauter , John Quade and Charles Tyner .

Cool cinematographer Gordon Willis prowls his camera splendidly through some wonderfully seedy , deserted landscapes . Evocative and atmospheric musical score composed by means of piano played by Harvey Schmidt. This Sleeper Western was well produced by Stanley R Jaffe and stunningly directed by Robert Benton , recreating compellingly this thrilling story ; being debut of Benton and whose most popular movie resulted to be ¨Kramer vs Kramer¨ . He is a writer and director, known for Kramer vs Kramer (1979), Nadine (1987) , Billy Bathgate (1991) , Nobody's Fool (1994) , Twilight (1998) , The human stain (2003), Feast of Love (2007) and wrote Superman (1978) and Bonnie y Clyde (1967). This much underrated Civil War era Western is rated above average ; being essential and indispensable watching for Western genre fans . Enjoyable scenarios , interesting script , nice performances and gorgeous outdoors make this well worth seeing .

In giving this an 8/10 rating, that goes into the top 7% or so of about 2500 movies I've viewed so far. Indeed, it falls right into that category of "one of the great films you most likely haven't seen." Why movies like this go unrecognized like they have is beyond me. If you've seen it, you already know what I'm talking about, so I wonder if I'm preaching to the converted here. I doubt I have much to say beyond what any other reviewers have already covered. This is a gritty and real, and yet also romanticized, take on the Western, beautifully shot (by DP Gordon Willis of the Godfather movies - enough said) and littered with dark comedy, not of the laugh-out-loud variety, but of the "these guys are so sad" variety. It also happens to be the second movie I've seen with both Jeff Bridges and David Huddleston, some 25 or so years prior to an actualized cult classic. The combination of these two actors in a film, appearing together in scenes only briefly, seems somehow, inexplicably, to touch a film with a certain genius.

It is no coicidence that one of the characters in this film is named Hobbs (Geoffrey Lewis), for this film dramatizes vividly what happens when you refuse to defend civil society. After escaping conscription into the Union army, the protagonist Drew Dixon is dumped out into the state of nature, a struggle for mere subsistence, joining a band of boys that die or drift apart as soon as they perceive their interests to be opposed those of the others. Drew perceives himself as a Christian man, but slowly realizes, thanks to the man he thinks is least moral (Jake), that he has been an amoral man all along. For Drew set out to meet only his own interests, ever since he joined Jake and the boys. In the end, we are left with a pivotal ambiguity: have we just seen the story of a young man molded by his environment, or a story in which evil begins with the choice to rebel?

A young man dodging the draft in the Civil War falls in with bad company on his way west. A group of juveniles trying to be hardcases, they run into a variety of men trying to do the same and one or two actual tough nuts. On the way, our narrator (Barry Brown) learns more than the usual lessons about what it is to be a man, to be brave and to be a friend. Brown will make you wish his career had been longer. Jeff Bridges is his usual terrific self.

Robert Benton, one of America's real treasures as a writer and director, is the force behind this. You'll see that many of the themes he was interested in back then still echo in Nobody's Fool and Twilight.