Burt Reynolds is an ex CIA hit man who coincidentally gets caught up in some sort of well-funded, ultra-patriotic plot in a small town in Oregon. Mister Big in this scheme is Cliff Robertson. Like one of those corrupt cattlemen in generic Westerns, he runs the town, including the sheriff, Kenneth MacMillan. When Reynold's car breaks down, he stays with the friendly garage owner, Scott Wilson. Wilson's nubile young daughter takes a shine to the disillusioned and taciturn Reynolds but he's too proper to take advantage of her advances, the fool.
After a run-in with a couple of Robertson's assassins, Reynolds winds up with a couple of bullets in his belly. He survives, of course, and is rescued and taken to a safe house by an old friend from the Company, Lauren Hutton. The suave local goons soon find the safe house and plastic-bag Hutton to death. This annoys the hero. And it provides him with the revenge motive that leads to the thoroughly predictable climactic shoot out.
Neat location shooting in British Columbia. Verdant forests, jagged hills, a pervading sense of tranquility.
Reynold's part could have been played by Charles Bronson, Dolph Lundgren, Jean-Claude Van Damme, the young Clint Eastwood, the aging John Wayne, or Babaloo Mandel. It wouldn't make any difference. It's a strictly routine action movie put together with all the generic elements -- the car chase, the exploding fireball, the oily hood who never blinks, the villainous smirk, the hero who holds his feelings in check, the ugly guns, the incandescent eyeballs of the man behind the curtain.
Burt Reynolds is a likable guy. Few actors lack pretense the way he does, unashamedly and in a funny, self-deprecating way. But he never really had any good scripts except "Deliverance" and "Boogie Nights." Cynthia Gibb was already in her mid-20s when this was shot, not the teen ager her character is supposed to be. Not that it matters. Her acting skills are modest at best but she's had dance training and, in some eerie way, it lends cachet to her extraordinarily conventional beauty. Her nose in profile could have been designed with the aid of one of those plastic French curves that are used in high school geometry classes.
Cliff Robertson is a fine actor in the right role. He never dazzles because he's given to subtleties. The flamboyant "Charly" was an outlier for him. In other roles, as the CIA bureaucrat in "Three Days of the Condor," he manages to get all kinds of signals across with the merest change of expression, a smooth smile or a momentary lift of the eyebrows. By the time of "Malone", he must have needed parts because this stereotype is unworthy of him. He died recently.
The film is diverting, that's all.
After a run-in with a couple of Robertson's assassins, Reynolds winds up with a couple of bullets in his belly. He survives, of course, and is rescued and taken to a safe house by an old friend from the Company, Lauren Hutton. The suave local goons soon find the safe house and plastic-bag Hutton to death. This annoys the hero. And it provides him with the revenge motive that leads to the thoroughly predictable climactic shoot out.
Neat location shooting in British Columbia. Verdant forests, jagged hills, a pervading sense of tranquility.
Reynold's part could have been played by Charles Bronson, Dolph Lundgren, Jean-Claude Van Damme, the young Clint Eastwood, the aging John Wayne, or Babaloo Mandel. It wouldn't make any difference. It's a strictly routine action movie put together with all the generic elements -- the car chase, the exploding fireball, the oily hood who never blinks, the villainous smirk, the hero who holds his feelings in check, the ugly guns, the incandescent eyeballs of the man behind the curtain.
Burt Reynolds is a likable guy. Few actors lack pretense the way he does, unashamedly and in a funny, self-deprecating way. But he never really had any good scripts except "Deliverance" and "Boogie Nights." Cynthia Gibb was already in her mid-20s when this was shot, not the teen ager her character is supposed to be. Not that it matters. Her acting skills are modest at best but she's had dance training and, in some eerie way, it lends cachet to her extraordinarily conventional beauty. Her nose in profile could have been designed with the aid of one of those plastic French curves that are used in high school geometry classes.
Cliff Robertson is a fine actor in the right role. He never dazzles because he's given to subtleties. The flamboyant "Charly" was an outlier for him. In other roles, as the CIA bureaucrat in "Three Days of the Condor," he manages to get all kinds of signals across with the merest change of expression, a smooth smile or a momentary lift of the eyebrows. By the time of "Malone", he must have needed parts because this stereotype is unworthy of him. He died recently.
The film is diverting, that's all.