User reviews

An interesting item on the resume of Michael Ritchie, the late director whose other credits include "Downhill Racer", "The Candidate", and "Fletch", the fast-paced and tongue-in-cheek crime drama "Prime Cut" succeeds at being an amusing piece of work. It's just sleazy and off kilter enough to make it a good if not memorable entertainment. It's well worth viewing for fans of the cast, establishing its tone early on when the mob in Chicago learn of the fate of one of their hired guns. Ritchie mines the rural settings for lots of atmosphere and uses the 2.35:1 aspect ratio to his advantage. There are also some real highlights in terms of action: a chase and a climactic shootout, both of which happen in fields. Enhancing all of it is a wonderful score by Lalo Schifrin.

Star Lee Marvin doesn't exactly have to stretch himself here, exuding that trademark cool as Nick Devlin, a mob enforcer assigned the task of collecting a debt from a Kansas rancher, played by Gene Hackman. (Another indication of this movie's tone is the fact that Hackman's character has a female name, Mary Ann!) Mary Ann doesn't want to pay his debt because he has no respect for the Chicago mafia. So Nick and a few others travel to Kansas City to pay Mary Ann a visit. Naturally, Mary Ann makes full use of his slaughterhouse, turning all of his enemies into cuts of meat! Nick also learns that his quarry is depraved enough to sell young girls as sex slaves, and rescues one of these girls, Poppy, played by the endearing Sissy Spacek.

Hackman's performance is great fun, and also appearing on screen are the delectable Angel Tompkins as Nick's former flame Clarabelle, Gregory Walcott as Mary Ann's thuggish brother "Weenie", Janit Baldwin as Poppy's friend Violet, and legendary police officer Eddie Egan as mob boss Jake. They all make this movie a pleasing diversion, one that, as previously mentioned, injects some trashy elements but never dwells too much on the darkness in the story. The big confrontation at the end is very moody and well done overall, and there's a satisfying wrap-up at the end.

Seven out of 10.

Days have been so hot lately I had to keep the air conditioner on all the night to prevent the room from turning into a human furnace. The trouble is that the machine is quite noisy and I had to reduce the volume on TV to let my wife sleep. Now, where am I going with these pointless details? I'm telling you.

Yesterday I had the unpleasant discovery that the subtitles option didn't work on my "Prime Cut" DVD, so I could hardly hear what was said between characters. And the oddest thing is that it didn't undermine my understanding, let alone my enjoyment, not at all. Now I can see why Roger Ebert compared Michael Ritchie's movie to a comic strip: it's a movie defined by actions, reactions and interactions rather than a complex and intelligible plot, and in fact, what the film could afford was precisely what it needed.

However, I doubt such a film can be possibly made today, when high-budgets and all-star casts became the new standard. Now, viewers need their minds to be blown and eyes stunned by the unusual, the stuff that elevates them, for 100 minutes, above their ordinariness and "Prime Cut" doesn't have such ambitious purposes. But it works for one simple reason: it's a film that knows where it goes, and trusts the presence of two great actors: Lee Marvin and Gene Hackman, with a honorable mention for Sissy Spacek, in her first and much promising film debut.

These are faces that can do without wisecracks or clever one-liners, when you see them; you know exactly what role they're assigned to. Marvin is the experienced and bad-ass debt collector, Hackman is the charismatic corrupt cattle owner and slaughterhouse operator and Spacek is the innocent fair-haired victim. Marvin has the obligatory macho magnetism, Hackman that lively sparkle that makes him even more likable than his enemy and Spacek, as usual, magnificently conveys the poignant fragility of the poor rural girl, victim of unfortunate circumstances.

And when these personality traits are all set-up, we confidently follow the action, trusting the actors' capacity to transcend the limits of these two-dimensional archetypes and provide great entertainment. But faces aren't sometimes enough and the director enriches a rather rudimentary narrative with a unique touch: the setting. Marvin belongs to the Chicago mob, but it's in Hackman's territory that the job must be done, in Arkansas. And don't be fooled by its bucolic appeal, the film hides an even dirtier business than anything you could find in the city.

Indeed, the film doesn't feature drug dealers, no pimps, no ethnic gangsters, no screeching police sirens, no cats crawling under trash cans, the bad guys are all typically wasp with hair as blonde as the wheat fields their monotonous lives have always basked in. This is the underrated Mid-West, America's wheat-belt that gives the film an unlikely escapist value, almost Western-like, à la Sam Peckinpah with Lee Marvin replacing Steve McQueen or Warren Oates. And on the violence department, the film has nothing to envy from 'Bloody Sam' work.

Danger is always present "naturally" starting with the impressive depiction of the slaughterhouse during the opening credits, when we follow the poor cows lead by the machinery that will turn them into steaks. I strongly suspect that among the millions of people who saw the film since its release, a few of them were converted to vegetarianism after witnessing the macabre spectacle. The credits ends with an intriguing oddity reminding us that it's still a gangster film: a shoe accidentally falls down from the sausage-maker. We get the point, whoever operates the slaughter house (it turns out to be Hackman) his enemies might end up sleeping with the cows.

And this is not even the most shocking aspect of the plot that seems like a breath of fresh air, from the boring perspective of our prudish political correct days. In fact, the notion of meat and flesh is so ambiguous that even the titles "Prime Cut" carries some disturbing undertones. And the surprise comes less from the revelation than its graphic depiction: poor naked girls being held in cattle pens and auctioned to avid rich men. Please, think about it twice before branding it as 'misogynistic': no film today would dare such sights, but aren't they metaphorically significant?

Isn't the only difference between that human slavery and what goes today contentment? Aren't girls eager today to be posing as fresh meats for greedy voyeurs, except that movies and social networks replaced the cattle pens? There's a thin line between forced and deliberate prostitution the film clearly exposes. It's made even more explicit through the fourth memorable character of the film: Angel Tompkins as Hackman's luscious wife, so amorally seductive that the word 'gold-digger' becomes a euphemism that doesn't fool anyone. It's for such gutsy moves like that that I will forever cherish the "New Hollywood" period when the humblest action-packed flicks weren't to be underestimated.

And "Prime Cut" flirts with subversive subjects through little glimpses, but it knows we needn't to be too preached about, and action must prevail. And for the thrills, the film provides an unforgettable wheat-field chase where hand-in-hand Marvin and Spacek escape from a combine harvester. And despite their predictable outcome, the gunfights and final shootouts are not without surprises. Michael Ritchie also directed "The Candidate" the same year, a film I enjoyed but wished it dug a bit deeper in its subject, but for "Prime Cut", packed-up in less than ninety minutes, it was enough.

So I would cheerfully compare "Prime Cut" to its defining element: meat. I enjoyed the film the way I enjoy a good steak: raw, with some tender sides, others 'harder-to-swallow", bloody the way it should, and not too overcooked. And when the plate is empty and you think you want more, a few minutes later, you realize you were plenty satisfied.

I saw this for the first time recently. Got pulled into seeing this only cos of Marvin n Hackman. The film is not ur regular gangster or hitman film. It has a different vibe to it. Both the actors gave memorable performances. Hackman's character is despicable wheras Marvin's character is a case study in professionalism. The field chase sequence is noteworthy n the film has a western style showdown.

Prime Cut (1972)

*** (out of 4)

Fun crime picture has a Chicago enforcer (Lee Marvin) heading to Kansas City where an evil cattle baron (Gene Hackman) owes the big boys some money but he doesn't plan on cutting them in on his business. PRIME CUT is a film that not too many people know, which is pretty surprising when you consider how popular these type of crime films are. Not to mention the film is probably the only one in history to feature three Oscar winners as well as a man who appeared in PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE. Overall director Michael Ritchie does a very good job at keeping the picture running very smoothly and while the picture certainly has some flaws, it's still a highly entertaining and at times sleazy picture. One of the highlights come early on when Marvin and his men show up at a "cattle" auction only to discover that Hackman has a major business of selling off women. The women, all in cages like cattle, serve up quite the image. The film also manages to have some great violence, although none of it really goes over-the-top or gets too graphic. There's a terrific sequence during a fair as well as another in a sunflower field. I'm not going to ruin either sequences but they contain some nice suspense. Of course, one of the greatest aspects is the terrific cast. While each cast member has been better in other movies, there's no doubt that it's still very fun to see them all together. Marvin and Hackman really appear to be having fun in their roles and we also get Angel Tompkins in a brief role as the woman who was with both of them. Sissy Spacek appears in a pretty thankless role but it's still fun seeing her. Gregory Walcott, a veteran of Edward D. Wood, Jr., appears as one of the major bad guys. As I said, there are certainly some flaws including the entire relationship between Marvin and Spacek but fans of 70's crime pictures will still want to check this out.

Mr. Marvin is his usual cut-to-the-chase, laconic bad guy in a so-so film with a minimal plot line and lots of action sequences. The fact that most of this melodrama is set somewhere in a Kansas farm region automatically makes this movie a bit different from others of this genre, rather than being filmed in the usual urban settings. Although this is a nice touch and the villains are also a bit different from what we are normally accustomed to, the movie tends to drag a little due in large part to the over emphasis on the visceral and under emphasis on plot and character development. Of course, this movie may have been intended to be shown in this manner, but I (a no-name part-time movie critic!) prefer more plot involvement, a la "Point Blank".

Great acting by the principals (Lee, Gene H., Sissy) helps redeem the film, especially a very young Sissy S. as one of Gene H.'s abducted sex slaves. But it's bad guy Lee doing a heroic turnabout by going on a rescue mission to save the "girls" from the really bad guy, Gene H., who already is in "Dutch" with Lee because of past transgressions.

At any rate, check it out and see for yourself: it's still fun!

Prime Cut may feature charmingly gravelly Lee Marvin, always brilliant Gene Hackman and Sissy Spacek when she was young and pretty, and its plot may be a turn through an interesting alley in the gangster genre, but it is still essentially a cheesy action movie that settles everything interesting about the story with the same shootouts we've been watching since Edwin Porter dazzled us for 11 minutes in 1903. I like guys in suits from New York collecting debts as much as the next guy, just as said guy and I like guys from New York collecting debts from Confederate neanderthals, and movies from the 1970s right down to the score by Lalo Schifrin. Nonetheless, it is not very fair to be absorbed in a story like this only for director Michael Winner to sit comfortably half-facing us within the confines of auto-pilot genre conventions.

Marvin plays a two-dimensional mob enforcer from Chicago sent to Kansas to collect a debt from Hackman's intriguingly characterized meatpacking boss. Spacek debuts as a young orphan sold into prostitution. There are already scores of ways scores of writers and directors could make an instant classic out of this material. There are some fantastically effective scenes in particular, a great deal of which derive from the reason why this otherwise assembly-line dirty-ol'-basterd picture was regarded as notably risqué for its time. The opening credits sequence is a composition of cleverly discreet images depicting the beef slaughtering process, with a very discreet twist. There is a striking portrayal of sex slavery in a scene where Hackman partakes in the auctioning of young women. There is a noted chase scene involving a combine in an open field.

There are also fast-sketch expository scenes like one with Hackman and the character Weenie, his brother and right-hand man, where their day-to-day dialogue is interrupted by their sudden urge to rassle, Hackman's accountants making an effort to remain furniture no matter where the fight leads. Marvin's boss in Chicago gives him some back-up muscle in the form of a driver whose life he once saved and three other younger members of the Irish mob. There is a style here that seems to have influenced the chic male-centric palette of Guy Ritchie's thug films. There is a brief scene where one of these baby-faced enforcers makes Marvin meet his mother as they leave Chicago. It is a swift, omniscient and interesting little inference of this character before he becomes another pop-up board for the various sundry bullets he will be obligated to exchange with other pop-up men.

A shootout never hurt a great movie, and not too many good ones. But this is one that could have been one of them had it not jumped to the guns so hastily without taking a stab at working out the thematic dilemmas first. The first inclinations when dealing with such a premise would be the themes of man and nature, culture clash, North and South, and other elements that could say a lot about the dual nature leading to opposing means of taking on the same criminal enterprises. Instead, it's simply Marvin the good guy and Hackman the bad guy, and they slice through their respective thickets of underlings until they come face to face, only then addressing the superiority of man over beast with a stunning irony I can only hope was intentional. But I don't think so.

I am watching this nearly 50 years after its release so perhaps back in the day it was a bit different. I started watching and it seemed a bit simple, almost quaint, with some good ole boys doing their thing, the next thing we have a bunch of sex slaves basically being bred at a ranch...WTF!

It came out of nowhere...

Beyond that it is really a simple tale of attack and counter attack between the baddie we like and the baddie we don't like.

If Marvin played this movie any more cool he'd be a penguin!

Good movie :)

I sought out this gem of a film after being impressed by "Point Blank". Lee Marvin exudes the kind of toughness that most modern day actors can't equal. Only Eastwood comes close. This is a raw, gritty and entertaining revenge/mob picture. Gene Hackman plays the heavy, but who is heavier than Lee Marvin? You just don't want to mess with him. I think this is one of Sissy Spacek's first appearances. Look at most modern "action" movies. There is a cookie-cutter formula. They try to be all things to all people. I call it the "Bruckheimer Effect" You have to force the "hip" humor for those with attention-span problems. You have to include a romantic interest/sex-sysmbol for the girlfriends and the drooling twelve-year-olds. You have to tie it all in with large explosions and car chases. Are you as bored as I am of these films? Watch "Prime Cut" and you won't see the extra grisle and fat of a modern hollywood action film . You will see a U.S.D.A. Choice kick ass movie.

It's hard to believe that Michael Ritchie directed this movie the same year he directed The Candidate. The movie starts out in Chicago with Lee Marvin as a top hit-man who is sent down to Kansas City to get $500,000 from Gene Hackman. Hackman's character is named Mary Ann and he left Chicago so he could be top man in Kansas. Hackman runs his business with his brother and they killed the guys who were sent to collect the money before Marvin was sent out. Sissy Spacek in her first movie, is a girl who was basically kidnapped and doped up and now used as a whore for Hackman. Marvin takes Spacek from Hackman and Hackman tries to kill Marvin. It's a pretty good movie and Gene Hackman is a great villain.

Two legendary Hollywood hard men, Lee Marvin and Gene Hackman, go head-to-head in this interesting thriller from director Michael Ritchie. Hackmann can act, Marvin just plays his stock character, but it's actually the latter to exudes more charisma, although the script is on his side: this is very much a Lee Marvin vehicle, structured not unlike 'Point Blank'. But that film had a distinctive, alienating air and ultimately showed clearly that its hero was no different, no better, to those he was pursuing. In 'Prime Cut', however, the villains of piece are (more typically, and more disappointingly) shown to be so depraved that Marvin is justified in sub-machining them down. Moreover, the sub-plot that explains this, their involvement in the trafficking of women to the sex trade, is presented in such a way as to seem sexist in itself. In other ways too the film appears dated: the editing is stuck somewhere between naturalistic and slick (not quite feeling like either), and the undeniably effective soundtrack is also horrid. What's more interesting is the setting: the story takes place in rural Missouri, but this is not America the beautiful. Instead, its the land of agribusiness and as such portrayed with an element of truth: although Ritchie does appear caught between emphasising its differences from the city, and its similarities.

'Point Blank' was a film ahead of its time in terms of style and tone. 'Prime Cut' is more like a typical thriller from the early 1970s. But either way, they don't make men like Marvin any more.

So what if 'Dog Day', made a decade later, repeats the threshing machine chase. It only underscores the success of the original, in which the 'teeth' of the threshing machine seem almost human. Watching them grind up the limo makes you feel almost sorry for the car. There are other scenes and themes I doubt that you will ever see in another movie: the packing house expose of what that meat you eat really goes through as it goes from the moo-cow to the sausage, for one. At least we don't see the guy actually made into the sausage the brother keeps eating!!

Hackman plays his evil best as an all-American who 'gives the public what they want' from meat to dope to virgins raised in an orphanage quite unlike the one in 'Cider House Rules'. Sissy Spacek does a good job in her first onscreen role, but come on!!! No one could be so stupid as to be unaware that they are wearing a completely transparent gown!! A few other holes in the film exist, but it is certainly a unique experience.

What a bonkers movie this is: gangsters turned into sausages, naked teenage virgins sold at cattle markets, a hard man called Mary Ann, car-eating combine harvesters, sausage-wielding hit-men - this one's got them all. It's also got Lee Marvin acting very cool as a dapper fixer for the Irish mob in Chicago who's dispatched to the mid-west to secure payment from a defaulting Gene Hackman who literally turned their last enforcer into sausage-meat. This one has a real 70s feel to it even though it's not generally recognised as a classic - which, of course, it isn't: character development is zero and the bad guys are like something out of a 1940's comic strip. Despite that, it's great fun - and Sissy Spacek, who isn't generally regarded as a classic beauty, looks gorgeous.

Michael Ritchie's lurid--maybe vile is the better choice--gangster against gangster flick, Prime Cut is beyond description because, 30+ years after seeing it, I still don't know what kind of movie it was trying to be.

Let's see. We have a grizzled he-man, gentleman hit-man in Lee Marvin, a rapist-pillager with a woman's name in Gene Hackman, a Hackman brother who reminded me of the goons in the old Popeye cartoons, and a young woman who is so surreal in her beauty (Sissy Spacek) that there is no way she could have been brought up in an orphanage specifically to be sold as a sex slave.

There's meat-packing, milk-tasting, white-slaving, and the Cadillac Fleetwood getting eaten by a thresher. Don't forget the Irish mobsters, all loyalty and mother's love, Hackman sneering at Chicago being a rotten old sow looking for fresh cream (I kid you not), and that dinner with Marvin's Nick Devlin and Poppy (Spacek).

I might get an argument from some about the natural loveliness of a young Spacek. Those eyes could just burn holes through you. I don't know her life story, but I'm wondering if she, as a kid, would turn that look on, and she would get whatever she wanted.

In Prime Cut, for some reason, Ritchie puts Spacek--who knows nothing about proper, adult manners in a restaurant, or propriety in clothing choices, for that matter--in a nice, at-the-top-of-a-hotel eatery across from Marvin. He shows her which utensils to use and when. He gives her fatherly smiles of calming encouragement. He gives an I'm-going-to-kill-you look to a middle-aged man who is staring at Spacek. Her gown is see-through.

Now, don't get me wrong. For years this has been my favorite part of Prime Cut, the care and feeding of the iguana residing inside my old brain. But the more I think about it, using my upper primate- hairless ape brain, the more appalled I am at this scene.

Spacek is a victim of sexual slavery. She has been purchased by Marvin to save her. He dresses her, feeds her, reassures her, then parades her into a restaurant wearing something that covers only her lap. Marvin doesn't rape Spacek, but it's that feeling that he's showing off a fresh piece of meat to the world, that he has power and authority. Kind of like a "benign dictator."

If you can get your iguana to settle down, you may find that the restaurant scene ruins the movie.

I've found myself hating Prime Cut because of its almost- pornographic attention to throwing in anything and everything amoral just to get a rise out of the audience.

But Prime Cut is almost a traffic-accident in its ability to draw your attention. It's the rescue aspect of the story, mixed in with the good-bad guys sent to discipline the bad-bad guys tension, the weird names for Hackman and Gregory Walcott, the evil lure of seeing all those drugged, naked girls for sale in pens, Lee Marvin sent to do a job for Eddie Egan wearing white bucks, the way you'll never really feel comfortable eating wieners again, Spacek's innocent appreciation of Marvin's benevolence while you and the guy at the next table are staring at her nipples, the shooting of the fat guy in the combine, the masticulation of the Caddy, and that moment when I knew Prime Cut was beyond classification, when Marvin looks down in disgust at Hackman's plate at the girl sale.

He states/asks/accuses, "You eat guts."

I have weird dreams on a regular basis, nothing bad, just weird. I wake up rested but feeling a little disjointed, and sometimes the dreams are so vivid, it takes a moment for me to return to reality.

Prime Cut is like one of my dreams, only I have to go searching for it (on average, once every two to three years) instead of it coming to me.

And, as far as Sissy Spacek's nipples are concerned, why do you think I sleep on my side instead of on my back?

Well, Sissy Spacek is very young and sweet (her first film). Gene Hackman, great talent but not great role here, he's like a negative character caricature. Lee Marvin, tough guy as usual, also does not have a great role (is the script's fault, which is not one of the best). But, as it is, not a great script, another director, like Sergio Leone for example, would have made something exceptional of it. Lalo Schifrin's music also is not one of his best. I love Sissy Spacek, Gene Hackman and Lee Marvin very very much, they are all three among my favorite actors ever but, I will not watch this one again, once it's enough.

In 1972, critics were so offended by the violence of this film (they were easily offended, back then), that they almost wholly missed the film's humanistic message - which is strange, because I doubt a film could state a theme more explicitly without getting didactic. If this films evades such lecturing - and it does - it is largely due to the exceptional understated performance of Lee Marvin; I didn't think anyone could wear white loafers and still look cool, but Marvin pulls it off. His utterly deadpan approach underscores his character's rapid responses to crisis situations - a truly dangerous man because no one expects him to be dangerous, he just looks cool. Michael Ritchie's direction is also noteworthy; he uses some strategies that also appear understated, thus giving the film a grittier feeling than one might expect from its MidWest locale. And there are some risky editing gambits (like the combine-car collision sequence) that, even when not totally successful, are efforts to be respected exactly for the risk undertaken. There are some drawbacks to the film - the ending (which I won't reveal) is entirely of its era, and a little embarrassing now; Gene Hackman's performance is a throwaway, when it needs to be as confrontational as Marvin's is cool; but the weakest point of the film is its sense of history: This script wanted to be a period piece set in the 1930s; the criminal underworld which these characters inhabit was a victim of the St. Valentine's Day Massacre (which put an end to the Irish mob in Chicago). To get a feel of the film that screenwriter Dillon really wanted to make, see "Road to Perdition". BUt taken on its own terms, and allowing that it is a genre film (and never pretends otherwise, really), this is a highly entertaining gangster film, with a grand performance by Lee Marvin.

If your fan of Lee Marvin like I am you will really dig this film. This time he plays a enforcer from a Chicago mob family. He is sent to Kansas City to settle a debt with a sadistic rancher named Mary Ann (Gene Hackman)who has a fancy for eating guts and selling young doped up girls.

This film also features a very young a beautiful Sissy Spacek in her first credited film role. Gene Hackman also gives a good performance but Lee Marvin shines as the mob enforcer.

This movie is a must see for fans of Lee Marvin. You wont need to invest much time or money into this film. as the running time is short at only about 86 min. and you should be able to find it on DVD for about 10 bucks.

Prime Cut finds Lee Marvin cast as a mob enforcer who gets called out of semi-retirement as a personal favor to boss Eddie Egan. It seems as though the head of the Kansas City territory, Gene Hackman, has been stiffing the syndicate on payoffs and now owes them a cool half a million dollars. Worse than that depending on your point of view, Egan's sent three guys down there and the last one returned, quite unrecognizable.

I don't think I've ever seen Gene Hackman as outrageously bad as in Prime Cut. Hackman is a rancher who owns a meat packing plant as well that comes in handy. There's also a personal angle with Marvin and Hackman, his wife Angel Tompkins was once involved with Marvin. Hackman who outwardly is a God and country dyed in the wool red stater has an interesting sidelight as well. Hackman sells young girls all doped up as sex slaves, stark naked in private auctions at his ranch. I don't think the screen saw a deeper dyed villain since Marvin's own Liberty Valance a decade earlier.

One of them Marvin actually buys after a pitying cry for help. This would be Sissy Spacek making her screen debut. She's cute and all, but I hardly believe Marvin as the big time mob enforcer would let her become a distraction in the job he has to do.

Prime Cut's story is a bit over the top. But in these situations when you've got a couple of professionals like Lee Marvin and Gene Hackman you just give them their head. These two really carry this film and make it several notches above the rating it should have.