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Better Together
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Theatrical Release Information
Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com
Shelved for more than a year and released as an un-holiday-like afterthought at Christmas 1970, this sardonic comedy-cum-Western-cum-prison movie immediately dropped off the radar and has scarcely been heard of since. We can understand that. By their own admission, hotshot screenwriters David Newman and Robert Benton (just off Bonnie and Clyde) and veteran director Joe Mankiewicz (more typically associated with the likes of All About Eve) never found the right focus for their mix of sociopolitical satire, frontier bawdiness, and brutal Western action. Still, the very unevenness makes for fascinating tensions, and the myriad insights and moods created by a cast comprising Kirk Douglas, Henry Fonda, Hume Cronyn, John Randolph, Warren Oates, and Burgess Meredith more than repay a visit.
Shelved for more than a year and released as an un-holiday-like afterthought at Christmas 1970, this sardonic comedy-cum-Western-cum-prison movie immediately dropped off the radar and has scarcely been heard of since. We can understand that. By their own admission, hotshot screenwriters David Newman and Robert Benton (just off Bonnie and Clyde) and veteran director Joe Mankiewicz (more typically associated with the likes of All About Eve) never found the right focus for their mix of sociopolitical satire, frontier bawdiness, and brutal Western action. Still, the very unevenness makes for fascinating tensions, and the myriad insights and moods created by a cast comprising Kirk Douglas, Henry Fonda, Hume Cronyn, John Randolph, Warren Oates, and Burgess Meredith more than repay a visit.
Douglas plays one of those charming bastards at which he excelled--here, Paris Pittman Jr., a bandit capable of seducing virtually anyone into doing his will. Pittman has a fortune in gold stashed somewhere. Inconveniently, he himself has been stashed in the territorial penitentiary in the middle of the desert, so he begins conniving to escape. This means betraying everyone in range, including the liberal-minded warden (Fonda) who's determined to redeem him. The stellar adversaries are ideally cast, with Fonda cannily subverting his own image (as he recently had in Leone's Once Upon a Time in the West). Cronyn and Randolph are priceless as "an old married couple," and Oates is heartbreaking as a congenital loner who thinks that, in Paris Pittman, he has at last found a friend. --Richard T. Jameson
Product Description
Arizona Territorial Prison inmate Paris Pittman is a schemer a charmer and quite popular among his fellow convicts - especially with $500000 in stolen loot hidden away and a plan to escape and recover it. New Warden Woodward Lopeman has other ideas about Pittman. Each man will have the tables turned on him. Academy Award winner* Joseph L. Mankiewicz cleverly lassoes a twisting turning Wild West tale of brawls chases shootouts and wry wit courtesy of a script by David Newman and Robert Benton (Bonnie and Clyde). Kirk Douglas as Pittman and Henry Fonda as Lopeman headline a sterling cast with Hume Cronyn Burgess Meredith Warren Oates and Lee Grant among the solid support. Boisterous yet blistering lighthearted yet lacerating There Was a Crooked Man is throughout all its moods delivishly entertaining.Running Time: 123 min.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: COMEDY UPC: 085391112075 Manufacturer No: 111207
