A musician helps a young singer find fame as age and alcoholism send his own career into a downward spiral.
Excellently produced and directed musical melodrama with good music and extraordinary performances throughout, but, all in all, it is simply an old-fashioned tearjerker.
Two Western bank/train robbers flee to Bolivia when the law gets too close.
Highly entertaining Western takes a lighthearted, but not insincere view of outlaw life and gives its two leads lots of room to expand (and enjoy) on their buddyhood, while never losing pace of the tale, and offers some spectacular landscape cinematography; the soundtrack may have been popular, but is a bit incongruous to the goings-on.
Halliwell****: "Humorous, cheerful, poetic, cinematic account of two semi-legendary outlaws, winningly acted and directed. One of the decade's great commercial successes, not least because of the song 'Raindrops Keep Falin' on My Head'.'"
Maltin****: "Delightful seriocomic character study masquerading as a Western....Many memorable vignettes."
Two cowboys have their friendship tested when they fall for the same girl.
Revisionist Western is beautifully made, especially concerning cinematography and score and the male lead performances, and the depiction of the buddy friendship works, but the romances don't convince at all.
Halliwell*: "Elegiac, overlong movie of the decline of Western
traditions that occasionally hints at more complex matters, of men
trapped by their own situation, before settling for nostalgia."
Maltin**1/2:
"A paean to the cowboy way of life and the joys of true friendship,
this film has so much going for it (including Harrelson's terrific
performance and Oliver Stapleton's cinematography) that it's a shame it doesn't hit the bull's-eye...and Arquette is so dull."
