dkallem

I concur with everyone above who said anything that will convince you to not waste even a briefest of moments watching this amazingly amateurish movie. Very poor acting, offhand production values, utterly pedestrian direction, and a script so inept and inane it should never have been written, let alone produced. Even Hollywood "professionals" apparently go to work just for a paycheck, although no one should have been paid for this bad work. Careers should instead have ENDED over this inconsequential drivel.

OTH, there is something fascinating about watching something so jaw-droppingly bad. And Chad Lowe is terrifically and consistently bad.

This--dare I call it--film is, IMHO, one of the worst productions ever recorded onto celluloid and released by a studio. Our daughter loved the original BNB, and seeing original director Michael Ritchie as this installment's Producer gave us some reason to hope, but 3 minutes of this extreme dog-of-a-movie was enough to dispel all of THAT! It's hard to believe this was made only two years after the original came out. From Tony Curtis' boozy, utterly amoral character (was this an acting job?), to the very incoherent script and equally helpless direction, this is a testament, I can only imagine, to the power of greed. Greed by a studio and production company that had had a hit with the first BNB movie and was determined to milk it for all it was worth--regardless of the #&%@! they had to serve up! Thanks folks! Save yourself the considerable bother and DO NOT watch this movie!

While a workmanlike effort for Friedkin and his team, this character study-cum-thriller is far inferior to "The French Connection," "The Exorcist" and even quite a bit less impressive than "Sorcerer." Several critics have noted the complete lack of sympathetic characters (and I take that to mean in the broadest sense of the word, "sympathetic"), but I wouldn't see this as a crippling flaw in the film so much as is the pedestrian directing, shooting, and editing (again, compared to Friedkin's best). The film's plot is also quite overheated, almost to the point of parody, especially as the ends of Chance's "plan" begin to quickly unravel.

Overall, quite a letdown. Check out instead the generally lower-rated, and admittedly flawed, but much more exciting Sorcerer if you're looking for some of Friedkin's lesser seen films.