This film is not bad, it has excellent camera-work, many good ideas and creates an atmosphere. The editing is at times sloppy and the action is a little repetitious. Two professional criminals have to deliver a boy witness to the mob. And they fail. The movie shows the reasons.
What lifts Cohen and Tate above the average is the top performance of Roy Scheider, an extremely talented thespian who unfortunately can show his wide range and his brilliance only too rarely. In Cohen he really creates a very memorable character, a truly tragicomic toughguy. Cohen and Tate resembles at times Reservoir Dogs, at times Fargo, and it is only fair to mention that both these hugely successful (and on the whole superior) movies were made years after this one. It makes one regret that Scheider never worked with either Quentin Tarantino or the Coen Brothers.
For everyone who finds interest in Cohen and Tate I can recommend, as far as Scheider is concerned, John Frankenheimer's excellent 52 Pick-Up. For a somewhat sublimated" version of Cohen and Tate see Stephen Frears' The Hit, with John Hurt in the Cohen part, Reservoir Dog Tim Roth in the Tate part and Terence Stamp and Laura del Sol jointly in the Travis Knight part.
What lifts Cohen and Tate above the average is the top performance of Roy Scheider, an extremely talented thespian who unfortunately can show his wide range and his brilliance only too rarely. In Cohen he really creates a very memorable character, a truly tragicomic toughguy. Cohen and Tate resembles at times Reservoir Dogs, at times Fargo, and it is only fair to mention that both these hugely successful (and on the whole superior) movies were made years after this one. It makes one regret that Scheider never worked with either Quentin Tarantino or the Coen Brothers.
For everyone who finds interest in Cohen and Tate I can recommend, as far as Scheider is concerned, John Frankenheimer's excellent 52 Pick-Up. For a somewhat sublimated" version of Cohen and Tate see Stephen Frears' The Hit, with John Hurt in the Cohen part, Reservoir Dog Tim Roth in the Tate part and Terence Stamp and Laura del Sol jointly in the Travis Knight part.