You can say Burt Reynolds should have worked with more top directors at his peak, but the fact is he had a lot of success with second tier talent like Hal Needham and Joseph Sergeant and had a lot of bad luck with ostensible A listers or critical darlings like Sam Fuller, Peter Bogdanovich, Stanley Donen and Don Siegel. (Needham did stunts on this incidentally.)
This was directed by Donen - or misdirected I should say. It's completely clear to see what writers Gloria Katz and Willard Hyuck were going for, a sort of MGM of the 30s picture with Gable, Harlow and Tracy, with modern sex and violence. But he stuffs it.
The film is flabby, has annoying soft tone photography and never seems to get its tone right. I was confused by what was going on a lot of the time. The production values aren't great - this cost a fortune but it's not up there on screen just a lot of puttering around on boats.
Burt Reynolds and Gene Hackman are fantastic as the two men. Liza Minnelli feels wrong though as the girl - I get that at the time it was either her or Barbara Streisand but she's too fey and vague when the role needed someone with a bit more drive.
This isn't terrible it just isn't very good, and also frustrating because you can see what they were going for and they miss. The best bit is the death of Robby Benson. There's also quite a racy threesome scene where Burt gives Gene Hackman's arm a fondle the morning after. Saucy!
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