Prime Cut Review

Michael Ritchie's "mobsters out of water" picture is a minor crime drama with plenty of low-key verve and a cynical view of Middle America. It was part of an unofficial six-film cycle that should have earned Ritchie more respect than he ever received.

Chicago mob enforcer Nick Devlin (Lee Marvin) is sent to Kansas City to collect a large gambling debt run up by Mary Ann (Gene Hackman). (No, Mary Ann's name is never explained.) Mary Ann has killed the previous debt collectors; the latest victim is ground into sausages in the unsettling, non-explicit opening sequence.

Once in the heartland, Nick discovers that Mary Ann is running dope and prostitutes. The latter is vividly illustrated by an "auction" held in a crowded barn where drugged women are kept naked in animal pens.

One of the women (Sissy Spacek) softly asks for Nick's help, and the tough guy doesn't hesitate to rescue the willowy thing, whose name is Poppy. With the contempt in word and deed that Mary Ann has shown for the Chicago mob, we know this will end in a bloody confrontation.

Director Ritchie makes great use of farmland settings, most vividly in a NORTH BY NORTHWEST-influenced chase sequence involving a wheat reaper (a huge motorized vehicle with giant grinding teeth) but also with huge open spaces of crops and flowers.

While lacking the extreme exploitation edge of extensive sex and violence, other elements of PRIME CUT make it relevant today.

Early on, Nick stops by the home of one of his new accomplices. The young man shyly asks Nick to meet his mother; as the gang drives off, the mother and the rest of the family sadly wave goodbye. They too are ineffectual citizens sending off their soldier son to another land to fight a war they do not understand but loyally support by their willingness to sacrifice a family member. OK, maybe that stretches the Vietnam comparison a bit much, but this was 1972, so it could not have been unintentional. Later, the gang's chauffeur explains to Poppy that Nick wouldn't allow him to die after he was shot, and further military allusions are apparent.

PRIME CUT was the second in a string of six films that Ritchie directed between 1969 and 1977 that, taken together, paint an unflattering portrait of a cynical nation. Previous to this one was DOWNHILL RACER; he followed PRIME CUT with THE CANDIDATE, SMILE, THE BAD NEWS BEARS, and SEMI-TOUGH, which are all recommended.

As portrayed here, the good citizens of rural America do no more than raise a puzzled eyebrow when armed men charge through a county fair and then chase a fleeing couple into the fields. We never see any law enforcement figures. In the aforementioned opening sequence, none of the meat factory workers raise any fuss when a quickly-glimpsed yet clearly visible human flank is sent into the grinder. In another scene, when Mary Ann and his brother tussle in an office, the two accountants working at a table are all too willing to turn a blind eye to what's going on around them.

Ritchie's career skidded around quite a bit during the subsequent two decades, but when matched with good material he could still deliver the goods (witness the television movie THE POSITIVELY TRUE ADVENTURES OF THE ALLEGED TEXAS CHEERLEADER-MURDERING MOM). He never was a showy director, but he elicited a terrific range of subtle performances, and his craft was evident in the unobtrusive way he allowed scenes to unfold. He realized that images were quite often sufficient to tell the story without dialogue; at the same time he knew how to punctuate a punch line.

Robert Dillon wrote the tangy original script; he followed this one up by writing two pictures for John Frankenheimer.

Paramount released this on a bare-bones Region 1 DVD earlier this year, but it is anamorphic with English DD 5.1 and 2.0 and a French mono track. It's available for less than US$15 from the ScreenAnarchy DVD Store.