Linbeymusol Wonderful character development!

Interesteg What makes it different from others?

SpuffyWeb Sadly Over-hyped

Smartorhypo Highly Overrated But Still Good

Mr-Fusion Great title aside, "Bad Company" undermines expectations in a couple of ways. It's a western, but of the revisionist sort (indeed, it's no rollicking escapism) and it feels like a coming-of-age story, but seems to be somewhat opposed to that, too. It's a curious thing: I approached this movie as a Jeff Bridges fan, and came away better appreciating Barry Brown instead. Which makes sense, it's his story. But he embodied the well-behaved Midwestern Christian so perfectly.There's a Mark Twain undercurrent running through all of this, but it's not a straightforward tale on the river. It's complicated and seeing how far Brown has fallen by the end credits is the real reason there's any shock value to this (even with the "Butch Cassidy" freeze-frame, which was kind of a disappointment). This movie isn't genre (re)defining but it scratches an itch. And even if you're not swept off your feet, there are high points; David Huddleston owns his scenes, those prairies certainly look good, and that tinkling piano score sticks with you.6/10

SnoopyStyle Drew Dixon is help by his parents to escape Union recruiters for the west. In Missouri, Drew is robbed by Jake Rumsey (Jeff Bridges) who leads a group of young thieves. While Drew finds refuge in the minister's home, he runs into Jake again who's hoping to steal from the minister. Drew demands his money back but Jake wins the fight and convinces him to join his gang.It's a revisionist 70s western. The story is a rambling series of episodes. The group never really attains any chemistry. Only Bridges has the charisma. The violence isn't shocking enough although they do shot up a rabbit really good. The movie has some compelling moments but it doesn't maintain the tension from beginning to end. First time director Robert Benton allows the movie to mosey too much.

Prismark10 Bad Company is directed and co-written by Robert Benton. The film opens with some soldiers going inside a house and dragging out a boy in a dress and throwing them in a wagon with other boys who have been avoiding conscription. The film was released in an era when some American men were avoiding the Vietnam draft for real.Barry Brown is one such boy who is given some money by his parents and told to skip town and escape the draft but encounters Jeff Bridges who takes his money and later they team up with his young gang to seek a fortune in the wild west frontier yet they end up with misadventures along the way.This western is an unromanticized story where the young men on the wrong side of law fall prey to bigger and meaner men. The film is elegiac in tone yet its peppered with humour and even playfulness between the two leads as they go through mutual distrust but Bad Company has no sweet coating.

Guy Plot: A band of boys escape the American Civil War draft and head West to seek their fortune.A simply wonderful slice of 1970s revisionism, really an anti-Western that overturns or subverts every trope of the Western. It's episodic and nakedly picaresque, preferring character to plot, but gripping all the same. Don't expect any riding into the sunset, but do expect chicken stealing, incompetent coach hold-ups and childish bickering. Put it this way, when they go hunting, they do it by blazing off rounds at a rabbit until one hits. Then it turns out that none of them has skinned a rabbit before... This same realism applies to the shoot-outs, in which the guns are inaccurate, the shooting poor, and nerves frail. In many ways it is a moral film, about compromising to survive, in which the characters are tested (and frequently found wanting) as they try and fail to taste the American Dream. Nonetheless, the film never loses its moral compass: death is treated with the importance it deserves, whilst genuinely moral characters exist (the Christian Lady and the Marshal). The characterisation is finely drawn; the cinematography is simple but beautiful (without slipping into pretentiousness); the (piano) score effective in its minimalism; and the direction light but firm. Above all, the film scores because it looks and feels real. The only weakness is the ending, which comes so suddenly that you'd be forgiven for thinking they just ran out of money and stopped filming.