StunnaKrypto Self-important, over-dramatic, uninspired.

AutCuddly Great movie! If you want to be entertained and have a few good laughs, see this movie. The music is also very good,

Bessie Smyth Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.

Roxie The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

evanston_dad Ben Mankiewicz, TCM host, introduced this film as a cross between "Of Mice and Men" and "Midnight Cowboy." Throw in a touch of "One Few Over the Cuckoo's Nest" and it's a pretty apt description.Given that, it's probably redundant to also say that his film is a major downer. It's good, the acting especially, but I don't know that I'd want to sit through it again. Al Pacino and Gene Hackman generate quite a bit of chemistry as two drifters who team up on a trek across the country and who plan to open a car wash together in Philadelphia. Pacino gets the more interesting character to play, the scarecrow of the film's title, and one of the things I liked best about the film was how it gradually upends our expectations that we're watching a character study of Hackman with Pacino as his sidekick, and instead turns out to be much more about Pacino's bruised, sad character, a much more complex one than we think we're introduced to at the film's beginning.The film also features Eileen Brennan in a brief appearance as a bar room broad, and Ann Wedgeworth (Lana from T.V.'s "Three's Company") as a woman who has the hots for Hackman.Grade: A-

lavatch In the opening scene of "Scarecrow," the character Max (Gene Hackman) has just been released from a six-year prison term and is walking down a hill carrying his suitcase. He then seeks to negotiate a small, barbed-wire fence, but gets enmeshed in the wire and tears his clothes. He then fails to observe a small incline ahead of him and tumbles down the hill on his ass. To add further humiliation, the entire act was observed by another hobo named Francis (or Lionel), as played by Al Pacino. Max prides himself on carefully planning everything out in advance. But he is caught in the lie in the earliest moments in the film.Hackman and Pacino create two unforgettable characters in this oddly matched pair of drifters. While both Max and Lion are running from their past, the film does not dwell on the past or even the future in their shared pipe dream of starting a car wash operation in Pittsburgh. Rather, the focus is on their present adventures, or encounters.Hackman is clearly infusing the character Max with his personal life story of a streetbrawler. At any given moment, his temper can flare and his smiling demeanor can turn on a dime. Pacino's character Lion is similarly on the edge with a disturbing proclivity to act out dramatic moments as a mask for his guilt at abandoning a woman whom he impregnated."Scarecrow" is successful in finding the right balance between the humor and the seething realities of the characters that lie beneath the surface. Nearly all of the small roles in the film are memorable, as the characters who come into contact with Max and Lion sense the danger under the congenial surface of the characters.When "Scarecrow" was released in 1973, film critic Roger Ebert wrote a mediocre review, criticizing the screenplay and the film aesthetics. But those very values are what are so striking today with the decline of quality and risk-taking in films. For this reason, it is difficult to find any "road picture" in the past half century that rises to the level of "Scarecrow."

kapelusznik18 ***SPOILERS*** Touching better-sweet and finally tragic film about two drifters hooking up and going through life in the early 1970's America to start up a car wash in Pittsburg that one of them Max Millan, Gene Hackman, has been saving up for his whole adult life. The other half of the duo merchant marine Francis Lionel "Lion" Delbuchi, Al Pacino, is far more modest in what he want's from life: To see his 5 year old son or daughter, he doesn't know the child's gender, who was born while he was away at sea. The two meet up and become good friends hitching for a ride and stay together throughout the whole movie until Lion suffers a complete nervous breakdown and is left in a hopelessly comatose and hospital in a vegetated state.While on the road the two ends up in a prison farm after Max slugged a policeman during a bar fight that Lion took part in. It's at the prison farm that the boyish like and sensitive Lion is brutally attacked and possibly raped by closet queen Riley, Richard Lynch. Riley who after spending a year deprived of any carnal outlets just couldn't hold it on any more and and catching Lion alone and unguarded attacked and ravaged the poor guy; Thus leaving him a bloody mess and having Max, later by beating the cr*p out of Riley, take revenge for his friend.***SPOILERS*** It's finally when both Max & Lion reached Detroit where Lion's wife and child lived Lion's wife Annie, Penelope Allen, getting a call from him to see about their child he's told that first it was a boy and that the boy died at childbirth and even worse wasn't, in Lion being a practicing Catholic, even baptized! This left Lion in a state of shock and ridden with guilt! But as we saw that Annie really lied to Lion, the boy was actually alive and well,to punish him for leaving her. Actor Al Pacino's reaction to Annie's lie was almost exactly like the one he had in the upcoming "Godfather II" movie when he finds out that his child was purposely aborted by his wife Kay that had him, as Mafia Boss Michael Corleone, beat her black and blue! The sadistic Annie, who was married to the Joey "The Banana King" Gleason, got her wish in destroying Lion's life by having him slowly crack up with the false news that she gave him that sent him straight to the hospital psycho ward in a vegetated sate that, as the doctor told his good and concerned friend Max, he'll remain in for the rest of his natural life!P.S A heart broken Max now all by himself buys a bus ticket-With money hidden in his shoe- to his home town of Pittsburg to open up his car-wash business but without his good friend and traveling buddy Lion who was to be his partner in this business venture now a distant memory.

MartinHafer Gene Hackman is Max, an incredibly angry and thin-skinned drifter with a penchant for fighting. Inexplicably, Lion (Al Pacino) insists on partnering up with him and they drift through life together for a while. They take odd jobs, hitch rides and seem to have little in the way of connections. The film follows them as they go from city to city and throughout all this you wonder why the nice, mild-mannered Lion has anything to do with the nasty and impossible to like Max. As for Max, while he says he saving money so that the pair can open up a car wash, he constantly is sabotaging himself and his big plans."Scarecrow" is the sort of picture you'd never see today. It's an aimless, drifting sort of slice of life with none of the formula or style you'd find in a Hollywood or even Indie release. In some ways, it's reminiscent of some of the French New Wave films. In other words, folks exist but there isn't any sort of a goal or direction in their lives. For me, this wasn't a particularly satisfying or enjoyable experience, though Pacino's performance was enjoyable and interesting at times. Hackman, however, was a one-not performance...angry and not much else.By the way, there is a rather brutal attempted rape scene late in the film. Folks who have been through experiences like this might want to avoid the picture as it won't be easy viewing.