A vicious Kansas City slaughterhouse owner and his hick family are having a bloody "beef" with the Chicago crime syndicate over profits from their joint illegal operations. Top enforcer Nick... Read allA vicious Kansas City slaughterhouse owner and his hick family are having a bloody "beef" with the Chicago crime syndicate over profits from their joint illegal operations. Top enforcer Nick Devlin is sent to straighten things out.A vicious Kansas City slaughterhouse owner and his hick family are having a bloody "beef" with the Chicago crime syndicate over profits from their joint illegal operations. Top enforcer Nick Devlin is sent to straighten things out.
Videos1
- Shayas Shay
- (as William Morey)
- Desk Clerkas Desk Clerk
- (as Hugh Gillin Jr.)
- Director
- Writer
- All cast & crew
- See more cast details at IMDbPro
Storyline
- Taglines
- Any way they slice it, it's going to be murder.
- Genres
- Certificate
- R
- Parents guide
Did you know
- TriviaLee Marvin had a serious feud with director Michael Ritchie, because Ritchie wanted him to have love scenes with the too young actress Sissy Spacek. Marvin hated Ritchie for this lack of respect for Spacek.
- GoofsWhen Nick enters the cornfield there's a spot on the back of his jacket. Next scene the strap on the pouch is covering it.
- Quotes
Poppy: I never knew a man before; not even to talk to.
Nick Devlin: Well where did they keep you?
Poppy: In the orphanage with the other girls.
Nick Devlin: And where was that?
Poppy: It was in Missouri. It's the only home I really remember. It was in the country.
Nick Devlin: Then you have nobody?
Poppy: Just Violet.
Nick Devlin: Who?
Poppy: Violet, the other girl that was with me. She's my sister... well, not truly but we're closer than that. Violet and me we'd climb into each other's bed when it was really cold in the winter time and hug each other really close. Sometimes we'd touch each other and dream how a man's hands would feel on us. I'd talk to her in a really deep voice and I'd say, "I love you Violet." Then I'd kiss her so she wouldn't cry. We tried to run away once. But the old woman caught us. She said we couldn't leave that we were being raised up special. But that when we were done there would be lots of handsome men loving us forever.
- Crazy creditsIn all of the marketing media, Lee Marvin and Gene Hackman were both billed above the title. However, in the opening credits, only Marvin is.
- ConnectionsFeatured in Discovering Film: Sissy Spacek (2019)
Marvin plays a two-dimensional mob enforcer from Chicago sent to Kansas to collect a debt from Hackman's intriguingly characterized meatpacking boss. Spacek debuts as a young orphan sold into prostitution. There are already scores of ways scores of writers and directors could make an instant classic out of this material. There are some fantastically effective scenes in particular, a great deal of which derive from the reason why this otherwise assembly-line dirty-ol'-basterd picture was regarded as notably risqué for its time. The opening credits sequence is a composition of cleverly discreet images depicting the beef slaughtering process, with a very discreet twist. There is a striking portrayal of sex slavery in a scene where Hackman partakes in the auctioning of young women. There is a noted chase scene involving a combine in an open field.
There are also fast-sketch expository scenes like one with Hackman and the character Weenie, his brother and right-hand man, where their day-to-day dialogue is interrupted by their sudden urge to rassle, Hackman's accountants making an effort to remain furniture no matter where the fight leads. Marvin's boss in Chicago gives him some back-up muscle in the form of a driver whose life he once saved and three other younger members of the Irish mob. There is a style here that seems to have influenced the chic male-centric palette of Guy Ritchie's thug films. There is a brief scene where one of these baby-faced enforcers makes Marvin meet his mother as they leave Chicago. It is a swift, omniscient and interesting little inference of this character before he becomes another pop-up board for the various sundry bullets he will be obligated to exchange with other pop-up men.
A shootout never hurt a great movie, and not too many good ones. But this is one that could have been one of them had it not jumped to the guns so hastily without taking a stab at working out the thematic dilemmas first. The first inclinations when dealing with such a premise would be the themes of man and nature, culture clash, North and South, and other elements that could say a lot about the dual nature leading to opposing means of taking on the same criminal enterprises. Instead, it's simply Marvin the good guy and Hackman the bad guy, and they slice through their respective thickets of underlings until they come face to face, only then addressing the superiority of man over beast with a stunning irony I can only hope was intentional. But I don't think so.
- jzappa
- Oct 9, 2009
Details
Box office
- Gross US & Canada
- $520,493
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