(WARNING - CONTAINS SPOILER) A draining film about the complicated imprisonment of the male - Falk and Cassavetes both briefly dream of not going back to their lives, then list off their obligations and face the inevitable; Gazzara is last seen amid a strange harem of women singing Dancing In The Dark, which largely sums up what the guys - in a grandstanding, toothlessly aggressive kind of way - have been doing throughout: flexing their muscles in the opening photo montage; egging each other on to sports feats and drinking and boisterousness; yet always somehow inherently sombre and respectable in their buttoned-up black coats - real violence and transgression is beyond them, except as a passing dream. In the London casino, as they play the tables, and when Falk gets into a hand-holding thing with an old woman, it's shot in close-up with the action all off-screen; as their psychic dilemma grows more intense, Cassavetes moves in closer and closer, so that the entire London trip consists of an anonymous series of hotel rooms and the like; bland and reflective of their claustrophobia yet - by virtue of their temporary escape and wild rush of freedom and the artfully contrasting women they meet - strangely exotic. The language and the acting are of course the main thing - the film is a dizzying succession of exchanges, as the men contradict and analyze and goad, always trying to position themselves in the overall landscape, and when they fail compensating with bravado and bluster - the long organized bar singing contest is brilliant, summing up Cassavetes' unique blend of documentary and stylization. Cassavetes appears happy to end the film on a more conventional note of the wanderer returned, but by then the movie's amazing intuitive scope has been well established.
