Often when I pick up a 1980s comedy VHS at the Salvation Army for $2, the first 10 minutes are great and it's all downhill and boring from there. Not this one. It was a pleasant surprise to watch this film twice and I expect to be watching it again and again.
It concerns four criminals, each with his own specialty: explosives, cars, guns and safe-cracking; stuck in a Montana cow-town waiting for their leader who has summoned them to do a job. The four don't know or trust each other, so the movie keeps you guessing as to whether one or more of them will pull a double cross on the others. Their leader, unbeknownst to them, has been arrested, which is why he didn't meet them as promised.
The leader, Frank Salazar, has been pursued by, and has escaped from, two moronic detectives whose bumbling, skewed priorities and lust for glory precipitate a lot of laughs. A shout-out also belongs to Fred Gwynne, who plays the explosives guy. He obviously has a heart condition and is seen intermittently popping pills and smoking cigarette after cigarette! As this film unfolds you get to know and actually like the characters, even though they are criminals and if you ever caught one in your back yard you'd kick his *$$. The movie has intelligent dialogue and two concrete assets that had me sold enough to decide I could watch it over and over: no tacked-on romance to ruin the pace and no real violence! For a movie with as many guns as this one, nobody gets shot or seriously hurt, except on account of their own idiocy. 9 out of 10.
It concerns four criminals, each with his own specialty: explosives, cars, guns and safe-cracking; stuck in a Montana cow-town waiting for their leader who has summoned them to do a job. The four don't know or trust each other, so the movie keeps you guessing as to whether one or more of them will pull a double cross on the others. Their leader, unbeknownst to them, has been arrested, which is why he didn't meet them as promised.
The leader, Frank Salazar, has been pursued by, and has escaped from, two moronic detectives whose bumbling, skewed priorities and lust for glory precipitate a lot of laughs. A shout-out also belongs to Fred Gwynne, who plays the explosives guy. He obviously has a heart condition and is seen intermittently popping pills and smoking cigarette after cigarette! As this film unfolds you get to know and actually like the characters, even though they are criminals and if you ever caught one in your back yard you'd kick his *$$. The movie has intelligent dialogue and two concrete assets that had me sold enough to decide I could watch it over and over: no tacked-on romance to ruin the pace and no real violence! For a movie with as many guns as this one, nobody gets shot or seriously hurt, except on account of their own idiocy. 9 out of 10.