Figures in a Landscape (1971)

Lack of good storyline.

As Good As It Gets

Clever, believable, and super fun to watch. It totally has replay value.

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

Dear Joseph Losey,Figures in a Landscape was a great survivalist action drama set in a hostile mountainous landscape. The film begins with a great tracking shot of two men running along a beach with the fading sun and the high tide in the background. A helicopter follows them in the distance. A great way to start your film. I was hooked immediately. The fact that we do not know what the characters are escaping from and who is tracking them down makes this film very interesting and unique. Though the relentless chase from the sky by the inhuman helicopter clearly underlines who we are supposed to sympathize with. I liked the great sweeping camera moments and the point of view shots from the helicopter (the camera is placed just behind the pilots). The hilarious exchanges between the two escapees (the often indecipherable Robert Shaw and weakly Malcolm McDowell) are as interesting as the action scenes and the location. It is a cruelly underrated and unknown film, Joseph.Best Regards, Pimpin.(8/10)

Rugged maniacal brute MacConnachie (a fabulously ferocious and galvanizing performance by Robert Shaw) and wimpy intellectual Ansell (a sound portrayal by Malcom McDowell) are a couple of escaped fugitives who are on the run in some unspecified foreign country. The pair find themselves being relentlessly pursued by an ominous black helicopter.Director Joseph Losey makes excellent and inspired use of the harsh, sprawling, and desolate countryside. Shaw's stark and intriguing script eschews pretense and exposition in favor of stripping down the premise to its mean'n'lean existential essentials whereby the plot basically becomes a gritty meditation on survival and the ruthless extremes people will resort to in order to stay alive in a hostile and pitiless world. Shaw and McDowell play off each other exceptionally well as a couple of radically contrasting fellows who are forced to depend on each other so they can persevere through a grueling ordeal that's beyond their control or understanding. Several scenes involving close calls with the helicopter register as quite dangerous and hence are positively harrowing to watch. The striking widescreen cinematography by Guy Tabary, Henri Alekan, and Peter Suschitzky offers a wealth of breathtaking aerial shots. Recommended viewing.

It's difficult making films which rely on a two-hander at their heart... especially when that film is pared back so much that the two actors have no interaction with anyone else anywhere in the film. In Figures in a Landscape, the intensity of the relationship between Robert Shaw and Malcolm Macdowell aspires to Waiting for Godot, but comes across as occasionally contrived and hokey. It seems that Robert Shaw himself adapted the screenplay... there is constant banter between the two main characters, but the verbal set pieces come across as being too theatrical. Malcolm Macdowell has a monologue about their being animals, but what is really lacking is the animus in these characters, the id... if they had the instinctive cool of the spaghetti western - a genre invoked by the film sharing the mountainous Andalucian landscapes of spaghetti classics such as Cut-Throats Nine (1972) - this would be a superior film. The classic Italo-Spanish spaghetti westerns also always intercut the terrains of the human face in close up and the badland landscape, and, curiously, close ups of the actors are almost absent in this film.That said, a film in which two fugitives run through a landscape hunted by a black helicopter and a faceless army has to be pretty cool in its own right.

Based on the novel of the same name by Barry England, and directed by Joseph Losey, Figures in a Landscape stars Robert Shaw and Malcolm McDowell as two convicts on the run.The film takes place in an unnamed Latin American country where the two men fin themselves constantly followed by a menacing black helicopter that attempts to gun them down. As they try to evade the helicopter, they stop for rest and nourishment, meeting people along the way that share the same contemptuous nature towards the mysterious powers that be. During these moments, they share information about their lives with one another becoming more human. We never know what crimes they have committed or why the helicopter is after them, but their fate is eventually clearly revealed.Figures in a Landscape is an interesting film and is a very rare film to come across.If you are interested in purchasing a copy on VHS, I may be able to help. Please send an e-mail to: [email protected] Colour/110 minutes/1970