An average movie

To be honest, I wasn’t really sure what to expect from this flick but since it was starring Jack Nicholson and Marlon Brando, I was quite eager to check it out. Well, even though the damned thing definitely had some potential, it still turned out to be rather weak. Apparently, it was supposed to be some kind of revisionist Western, a genre rather popular in the 70’s, but it turned out to be mostly wacky after all and not in a good way, I’m afraid. Indeed, on a regular basis, there were some really random silly jokes and, of course, you had Marlon Brando. Basically, Brando improvised most of the time and delivered a really gonzo performance in the process. Well, no matter what was exactly Brando's agenda here, the end-result was definitely dubious at best. To be honest, at this point, you might wonder if Brando still really cared about acting anymore and I can imagine how frustrating it must have been for Jack Nicholson to work with this legend and his infamous cue cards. And, yet, I’m pretty sure that without Brando’s really wild and weird performance, the damned thing would have been terribly flat and, at least, it made the whole thing seriously unpredictable. Is it possible that a more traditional approach would have been more effective? I’m not so sure. I mean, Harry Dean Stanton did manage to do a lot with very little with his character but everyone in this gang was not developed at all and the whole romance involving the main character and basically the only female character around was hardly convincing. Anyway, to conclude, even if it turned out to be disappointing, I still think it is worth a look but there is no denying that, with such actors involved, it could or should have been so much better.