Prime Cut and Target

When your career lasts as long as Gene Hackman's, two things are inevitable: you're going to work with directors more than once and you're going to appear in some weird films. In fact, the first usually leads to the second. Hackman has managed to keep repeat collaborations to a minimum but, as a result of previous successes with Michael Ritchie (Downhill Racer) and Arthur Penn (Bonnie and Clyde and Night Moves), he appeared in this pair of mixed-results oddities...and never worked with either director again.

Michael Ritchie used to be an underrated cult director but, with outspoken advocates like David Gordon Green singing his praises, the late director's reputation has returned to something approximating justice. Often dismissed as a crude director of comedies -- hell, he did direct Wildcats -- Ritchie's body-of-work suggests a far more varied and impressive talent. In the 70s alone, he made at least two widely acknowledged classics (The Candidate and The Bad News Bears) and two even better satirical milestones (Smile and Semi-Tough). With this emphasis on comedy, the Hitchcock-meets-The Dukes of Hazzard suspense of Prime Cut may be Ritchie's least representative work.

Set in Kansas City, Prime Cut deals with some shady mob dealings (is there any other kind?), involving female slavery and a desperately-in-need-of-inspection slaughterhouse (yes, human bodies find their way into sausages). Nothing even remotely like this would come out of Hollywood today, a reality that's pretty much par for the course with anything from the pre-Jaws portion of the 70s. Prime Cut has no marketable hook and eccentric plot developments/stylistic flourishes arrive at every turn.

In truth, this is Lee Marvin's movie, not Gene Hackman's. But Hackman gives a typically lively supporting turn as Marvin's misogynistic adversary. Hackman has always played villains with a smile and this unorthodox choice is as effective here as ever. It's hard to believe Hackman played The Conversation's Harry Caul only two years later. These polar opposites may as well be from different planets.

Target -- not to be confused with Peter Bogdanovich's vastly superior Targets -- is a far riskier bet than Prime Cut. Made at the peak of the international intrigue genre, this film deals with a troubled father (Hackman) and son (Matt Dillon) team who travel to Paris, in search of their family's kidnapped matriarch. Along the way, Hackman reveals his CIA background, a key motivating force in the whole fiasco, and everything goes haywire.

It never ceases to amaze me how different Matt Dillon's early work is from his later work. As a young actor, he routinely played naive, idealistic livewires, whereas he has played exclusively the opposite in pretty much everything since. Even in Arthur Penn's expert hands, his work here is shaky and the film has more than its share of unlikely, embarrassing moments. Those looking for a superior Hackman-Penn film should probably hold out for Night Moves, which finally gets a DVD release on July 12th. That said, Target is generally engaging and by no means dull.

As expected, both discs are featureless. While Target's anamorphic 1.85:1 transfer is surprisingly poor -- this looks like second generation video -- Prime Cut's pristine anamorphic 2.35:1 transfer re-enforces Paramount's reputation for a/v excellence. My only previous exposure to this film was an atrocious pan-and-scan VHS tape released by Key Video years ago so this new transfer is something of a revelation, revealing craftsmanship the videotape didn't even hint at. If you need a fresh dose of vintage Hackman, Prime Cut is definitely your best bet...until July 12th, that is. -- Jonathan Doyle