I jest, of course. I guess I didn't dislike Quintet as much as most people did, although it is quite an ordeal to sit through. The interesting thing about it is that, unusual as it is, I felt like I'd seen it a thousand times before. In various ways, it strongly suggests Rollerball, Soylent Green, Walking Tall, and even Satyricon, another movie I didn't like. It's Fellini on ice, you might say. It's amazingly trite for an Altman picture - a distant world when everyone's nuts except the hero. And the mano-a-mano stuff between Paul Newman and Vittorio Gassman at the end is right out of Saturday afternoon matinée. The plot points aren't clear in any way until the end when Paul Newman sort of sums them up, but then Fernando Rey tosses it all out by replacing the logic with a philosophical explanation of life, similar to the one John Houseman gave in Rollerball. The music and sets both fall into the category of lavish condemnation. Well, at least I was indoors when I watched it.
