Pocket Money (1972)

One of my all time favorites.

Good movie, but best of all time? Hardly . . .

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

Seems like a lot of wasted potential. Paul Newman and Lee Marvin have some decent chemistry between their characters, and Strother Martin and Wayne Rogers are OK. A young Hector Elizondo is a long way from the manager of the Beverly Wilshire Regency. Carole King does nice work on the theme song. The cinematography looks very nice, and the direction is unobtrusive. But there is simply no there there. The film has a plot that seems to be heading somewhere, but just sort of fizzles out with no closure, no climax, and no denouement. I wonder if the source novel was this unsatisfying. It would be really hard to recommend anyone to watch this film.

Asinyne (excuse me if spelling is wrong) says that Paul Newman's character in Pocket Money is basically the same as the one in the much better Hud. Well I'd advice the afore mentioned to go back and watch Hud again. In that classic movie, Newman plays a son of a bitch. In Pocket money he plays a far different type of character. Hud would have despised Jim Kane. It was a well acted acted movie, although I though Marvin overshadowed Newman. Strother Martin who has acted with Paul Newman on numerous occasions was as usual terrific. I liked the movie, but would not consider it one of Newman's best.I think I recall reading somewhere that the stars didn't get on while making this movie.

The players in this comic character sketch deserve better than they got. First, the story is confusing. Paul Newman as a naive cattle buyer in Mexico, working for Strother Martin and Wayne Rogers, is able to keep track of all his expenses in a little notebook, but I got lost in the negotiations. Lee Marvin is Newman's pal, guiding him through the vending process, showing him around, and exchanging philosophical wisecracks with him.Second, the situations in which this richly talented pair of actors find themselves are just not very funny or engaging. At the end of each scene, I kept waiting for the payoff and there simply weren't any. The movie itself abruptly ends in the middle of a conversation that I thought was part of the plot development. A freeze frame leaves the two men lounging at a deserted railway station with nothing to say, no place to go, and no money to pay for getting there. Everything is left hanging.And the two principal characters aren't particularly endearing. Newman is a somewhat shy but highly principled buyer. He brings the right kind of physicality to the part -- his expressions and gestures -- but he tries for a suitable vocal frame that just isn't there, and he comes out sounding like an adolescent on a second-rate TV sitcom. What smiles there are in the film come exclusively from Lee Marvin. All right, he's played sleazy characters before, but he's introduced to us lying in bed in a shabby Mexican hotel, his trousers down around his rear end, suffering from a horrific hangover. And he underplays it this time. (Well, underplays it for Lee Marvin, anyway.) "You'd be doing me a favor," he tells Newman, "if you'd just put a bullet through my head." When he tries to wash his face, he reaches blindly for the soap and grabs a pigeon instead, and his hands and fingers flutter alarmingly as if at the approach of death. Newman and Marvin work well enough together. It's just that they're given nothing much to do, nor has the dialog any sparkle.Many of the scenes just look pointless. They herd the cattle to Hermosillo and at night Newman claims he hears someone nosing around the animals and cursing. He borrows Marvin's Luger, steps into the bushes, and fires a few shots into the air. The next day Marvin lets one of their vaqueros sniff the barrel and remarks that it's just been fired within the last few hours. What's the point of the scene? To scare the vaqueros into thinking that they'll be shot if they try to run off with a cow or two? If that's it, it gets as lost as the rest of the script. If this is an attempt to coast along on the notion of bringing Newman and Marvin together -- as Newman and Redford had been together in the blockbuster "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" -- it doesn't work. "Butch and Sundance" had a story to tell and a go-to-hell anachronistic wit in its script. Stuart Rosenberg's direction ("Cool Hand Luke") is pedestrian here.The photography by Laszlo Kovacs is colorful and evocative. The score, by Alex North and others, is all over the place -- Carole King, Burt Bacharachish, a wistful solo harmonica, and Dixieland. The meandering script is by John Gay and Terry Malick. Meanders aren't, in themselves, to be objurgated. Malick wrote and directed "Badlands," an episodic film filled with non sequiturs that was, in its quiet way, superb. But, again, while "Badlands" had a beginning, a middle, and an end, "Pocket Money" seems all middle. Everyone here seems to have enjoyed themselves on a Mexican vacation but the resulting film has only a slight charm.

Eccentric ambiance abounds, but this scruffy, mild modern-day western never builds much momentum. Down-on-his-luck Arizona cowboy takes job herding cattle through part of Mexico. Adaptation of J.P.S. Brown's novel "Jim Kane" isn't a strong vehicle for Paul Newman, likable but curiously dopey throughout (this is no "Hud"). Lee Marvin gives a friendly performance as Newman's equally half-witted cattle-broker pal. Director Stuart Rosenberg, who never does consistent work and therefore is a tough filmmaker to pin down, does a nice job at concocting a low-key, lightly rambling atmosphere, but the plot is too skimpy for these characters to truly come alive. As a character-study, it's a pleasant enough throwaway. Screenplay by future filmmaker--and cult icon--Terrence Malick, from an original treatment by John Gay. ** from ****