Prime Cut

Intensity

Stupidity:Nudity Ratio

5:6

Budget

Large

Okay, so I'll be honest. My main interest in seeing this film was to see Sissy Spacek naked. Happily once I accomplished this, I still found the film interesting.

Mob enforcer Nick (Lee Marvin) has a meeting with his boss in Chicago. Seems like Mary Ann (Gene Hackman) is about $500,000 behind in his payments. Nick indicates that he does not want to go and is told that the last three guys came back dead, one of them stuffed into sausages. Nick heads off to the heartland with three younger enforcers and his trusty driver. When they track down Mary Ann he is having an auction for white slaves instead of cattle. Nick insists that Mary Ann pay the mob the money and takes Poppy (Sissy Spacek) back to the hotel with him. He sends his driver out to get clothes for her. Poppy and Nick go to dinner and then discuss life. Mary Ann tries to kill the Chicago boys at the fair. One of them is shot and Nick and Poppy barely escape from a thrashing machine. Nick takes his reduced squad back to the ranch and tries unsuccessfully to sneak in through the sunflower field, but is spotted almost immediately and his remaining two soldiers are wounded. He hijacks a truck and goes in alone killing the last couple of rednecks as well as Mary Ann and his hot dog eating brother. On the way back to Chicago, Nick and Poppy stop at the orphanage that raised the girls for Mary Ann and frees them.

Good Guys (sort of, I mean, they work for the mob)

Bad Guys.
Look at the crowd in the back. One of the problems with using untrained extras is that they tend to stand around watching the action. Just about every head is turned looking at the lead actors.

Not quite good enough good guy.

I have heard it said that Hollywood is promoting younger and younger actors. That the movie going public is no longer interested in mature characters. The world-weary anti-heroes of yesteryear are being replaced by wiseass punks. Things change, so this is no big deal but sometimes I miss those solidly grounded characters. Guys who have seen it all but still do what they have to do because of duty and loyalty. Lee Marvin's Nick is just such a character. He initially tries to get out of the assignment because he has already done his share. But when it turns out that the last three men sent to do the job have been killed, he accepts the job. During the course of the job he encounters and rescues Poppy. While Poppy is supposed to be a young girl raised in an "orphanage" with the intent of being sold as a sex slave, she is oddly worldly and seems to be much more aware of what is going on around her than you would expect. Initially you think Nick would be interested in her sexually, but he seems largely indifferent to her nudity and slaps Mary Ann for suggesting that they had sex. There is a strong indication that Nick was susceptible to feminine wiles (Clarabelle may have started working her way through the mob with him) but the question of whether or not he has sex with Poppy is left unanswered.

While the credits roll, we are walked through a slaughter house as the gangster is processed. Yes, that is his butt.

After the being turned into sausages, he is mailed back to the mob.

Much like the scenes set in the wheat field and the sunflowers, Poppy is meant to represent a basic goodness and reason for doing the right thing. Nick expresses no emotion when first seeing the girls in the pens, but once Poppy says "help me", he takes her with him. Clearly Nick does not take down Mary Ann because he is doing bad things to little girls, he takes him down because he owes money to the mob. This does not put Nick on really strong moral grounds here, but we never expect him to be law abiding only loyal to his ideals. I suppose we could look at Poppy as a muse or perhaps as a child that Nick is fond of. When he takes her to dinner she is naked under a very sheer green dress and Nick forces everyone to behave as if she is properly dressed. The scene has a feeling of indulgence of a favored child rather than the displaying of arm candy. For a movie with no real subtlety, the scene at dinner has a real nice touch. One of patrons turns around repeatedly to stare at Spacek's chest (comparing me to this character is a cheap shot). Eventually Nick turns around and stares the guy down, then looks at his wife and something passes between them. To me, it looked like he almost flirted with her and she coyly looks away. The scene plays out quickly and without emphasis, but this may be the first sign of humanity we see in Nick.

Angel Tompkins as Clarabelle. She was every bit as sleazy and slimy as Gene Hackman's Mary Ann, but looked much, much better in lingerie.

Before going off with the team, one of the guy's moms is shown. She has short reddish hair and a house full of kids. There are a couple of younger brothers that you can't see in this shot.

At the end of the movie we visit the orphanage where Poppy was raised. I don't know if this scene was intentionally meant to look like the Irish kid's house. If so, was the director making some kind of comment on raising kids for the mob either as soldier or whores?

The movie has several really silly scenes and none of the characters are treated well. Mary Ann is clearly a scumbag, but after he buys a heifer from one of the local kids, the kid starts off stating that it is a pet, looks at the money and then asks if Mary Ann wants to buy a goat. All of the women in the film either sell themselves to men for prestige and power or are sold by men. To be fair, so do all the men in the movie. Clarabelle's currying of favor is not a lot different than what the enforcers do.

As the team drives into town, we see this rather odd farm implement. I think it is meant to be a thrasher (basically an overgrown mulcher), but man those teeth.

After escaping the guys trying to shoot them, Poppy and Nick take a breather unaware of the danger bearing down on them. You will want to suppress your laughter at what comes next.

Nick's driver saves them by ramming his car into the maw of the thrasher which then proceeds to mulch the car.

After mulching the car and shitting out several pieces of it, the thrasher then drops a bale with car parts in it. I am sure this was meant to be taken seriously, but I was laughing. To make matters worse, the next scene features the surviving good guys looking on in horror at the chewed up car. None of these guys blinked an eye at the death of their friends or the white slave ring, but a demolished car moves them nearly to tears.

The other thing that really dates this movie is the nudity. If this went through the ratings board today it would be rated NC-17 because of the shots of pubic hair. There is no real sex in the movie but it would get the "rating of death" anyway just for those shots. Coming shortly after the initial scenes in the slaughter house and then seeing the girls kept in pens, we are supposed to realize that Mary Ann thinks of these girls (and people in general) of being just like cattle. The scene is appropriate because not only do we get to see Sissy Spacek naked (yeah) but we also feel a little uncomfortable about her being displayed like a side of beef (stupid conscience). Time and again I am amazed at how the ratings board will let you say anything in an R rated film, but any shots of genitalia will earn a film that NC-17. Actually if the pubic hair was not enough to get the rating, the opening shot in the slaughter house almost certainly would.

Poppy and Violet in their pen. Named after flowers I suppose, though I wonder if they meant to make a drug reference with the name Poppy.

The Dress.

Talking. Spacek is discussing why she feels that life is worth living. After watching the movie I found out that Spacek's brother died at the age of 18 from leukemia just a little before this movie. This prompted Spacek to think that life is too short to waste in school, so she quit.

Still all in all this is a pretty good movie. Lee Marvin plays Nick with an economy of motion that implies he is a much more dangerous man than he appears. Angel Tompkins is just as sleazy (and considerably better dressed) than Gene Hackman as both of them bluntly state what they want. The cinematographer uses some pretty common themes from that era and the director managed to get an entire small town to act as extras. Most of the plot is pretty obvious but Spacek and Marvin play off each other well. Worth seeing when you are in the mood for a big budget drive in movie.

Got a comment or different opinion? Send a message.