Small quibble

$ (Dollars) Review
by Brendon Hanley

"After the success of Bullitt, crime movies felt the need to include high-velocity audience grabbers. The same year as The French Connection, $ (Dollars) featured a bizarre, laughably long -- it lasts more than twenty minutes -- chase scene with almost no dialogue and a rather shrill score by Quincy Jones. Was this a comment on the trend? More likely, it was director Richard Brooks' attempt to catch up with the times. Brooks had made a number of important Hollywood movies (Blackboard Jungle, In Cold Blood) and was probably feeling pressure from the new wave of young filmmakers weaned on a French disregard for rules. $ was his attempt at the "avant-garde," which may also account for the film's wild swings in mood and tone. Regardless, Warren Beatty's charm and Goldie Hawn's winsome good looks help make the movie a pleasant bit of 1970s fun. "

Thanks, Allmovie, for the dandy review of a film that really got lost in the shuffle of seventies cinematic greats. I was kept on the edge of my seat, sometimes far too long, during the screeing of this audacious and fun filled flick. Somehow, in the midst of Bullitt and The French Connection and all the rest of those other classic new Hollywood flicks that were prescribed for my enlightenment back in the day this thriller/buddy/action piece slipped right on by. And maybe that's why that one little snippet of drug laced humor towards the end of the film was so touching, so laughable, so rotten in its delivery.

When the bad guys were trusting the courier to deliver a number of bottles of acid to Hamburg they weren't passing along drain cleaner, so why, when the somewhat evil US Army Top Kick takes a celebratory swig of a supposed bottle of high end bubbly does he do the instant clutched throat death scene as if he just took a big hit out of a bottle of Drano? The truly wicked courier did a switcheroo, sure, put the flagons of LSD in champagne bottles in order to clear customs, but if a man were to take a hit from one of those bottles he wouldn't expire like the guy did up on the big screen, he would just trip out massively and seemingly endlessly for hours on end.

I am sure that there would have been times during that long and winding trip when that character would wished to die, but then again, considering the times, the supposed purity, the quantity we saw him imbibe, I am sure that on the psychic plane he did die many times over. Afterwards, if he had any thoughts of his own left inside his paisley colored mind, he wouldn't have remembered his role in any kind of caper. But die? I don't think so. What kind of acid were they talking about, anyway? Oh, yeah, right, this was screened in Des Moines, too. Just say no!

Okay, go find the movie. Goldie Hawn was wonderfully silly and charming, Warren Beatty never more handsome and the twists and turns in the plot were dandy. Once hard to find even on VHS this oldie but goodie is worth the hassle to seek out.

Action!