While the question is a bit rhetorical, I do mean it- you don't see that many movies made anymore like this, The Last Detail by Hal Ashby (Being There) and Robert Towne (later to write another Nicholson gem, Chinatown), where the story is just a baseline to the characters studied in subtle and not so subtle ways. It even grows on the viewer if seen multiple times, where what seems to be dragging on is loaded with nuance. There's a level of existentialism to it: how free are Buddusky and Mulhall, or their choices? Probably not much at all, at least not any more or less than the doomed Meadows. But this is not the only method of Ashby on the material, there are also superlative performances from Jack Nicholson, Otis Young, and a newcomer at the time, Randy Quaid.
Nicholson and Young play Buddusky (Bad-ass), and Mulhouse (Mule), who are assigned "chicken-s*** detail", to transport petty thief Quaid, sent up for eight years in a naval brig. On the way up the Eastern seaboard, the three stop in Washington, New York, and Boston, and the two try to show the youngster a good time before imprisonment. Probably one of the most under-looked pictures of the 1970's, though one of the more note-worthy, especially for it's attitude delivered ten-fold by Nicholson's Cannes winning Buddusky, and Towne script. A scene in a bar in Washington and a scene at a Nichiren Shosu meeting steal the lot, though there's plenty to look for. It's one of my favorite tragic-comic sleepers, and one of Ashby's best.
Nicholson and Young play Buddusky (Bad-ass), and Mulhouse (Mule), who are assigned "chicken-s*** detail", to transport petty thief Quaid, sent up for eight years in a naval brig. On the way up the Eastern seaboard, the three stop in Washington, New York, and Boston, and the two try to show the youngster a good time before imprisonment. Probably one of the most under-looked pictures of the 1970's, though one of the more note-worthy, especially for it's attitude delivered ten-fold by Nicholson's Cannes winning Buddusky, and Towne script. A scene in a bar in Washington and a scene at a Nichiren Shosu meeting steal the lot, though there's plenty to look for. It's one of my favorite tragic-comic sleepers, and one of Ashby's best.