Robert Dupea spends his days doing various odd jobs, drinking and womanizing until an encounter with his sister makes him revisit his past.
Ratings
Curator score: 8.0/10
IMDb: 7.4/10
Letterboxd: 3.88/5
Rotten Tomatoes: 89%
Metacritic: 85
TMDB: 7.1/10
Director
Bob Rafelson
Production
BBS Productions, Columbia Pictures
Cast
Jack Nicholson, Karen Black, Susan Anspach, Lois Smith, Ralph Waite, Billy Green Bush, Irene Dailey, Toni Basil, Lorna Thayer, Richard Stahl, Helena Kallianiotes, William Challee, John P. Ryan, Fannie Flagg, Marlena MacGuire, Sally Struthers, Clay Greenbush, Bob Rafelson
Curator Review
Verdict
A landmark 70s character study: bleak, funny, and quietly devastating. It’s best when you want an antihero portrait of drift, class tension, and emotional self-sabotage rather than a conventional plot.
Best for
fans of 1970s American New Hollywood dramas
viewers who like morally messy antiheroes
people drawn to understated, character-driven films
audiences interested in class conflict and family estrangement
fans of dry humor mixed with melancholy
Skip if
you want a fast-moving story with clear stakes
you dislike emotionally withholding protagonists
you prefer warm, redemptive dramas
you need strong female character writing as a priority
you’re not in the mood for a downbeat, alienated tone
Overview
Five Easy Pieces is one of the defining portraits of American drift. Jack Nicholson plays Robert Dupea as a man who seems allergic to commitment, whether it’s work, family, love, or even his own talent. The film keeps finding new ways to make that refusal feel funny, pathetic, and tragic at once.
Worth noting
Bob Rafelson’s direction is loose but exact, letting the movie breathe around small humiliations and social friction. The famous diner scene gets the attention, but the film’s real power is in how it turns ordinary encounters into a diagnosis of class anxiety and emotional vacancy.
Bottom line
What lingers most is the sense of a life narrowed by avoidance. It’s a great film if you like your dramas observant, unsentimental, and a little cruel in the way they reveal character.
Top Letterboxd reviews
Josh Lewis (4★) · 1492 likes
The empty man. Just nothing there. Brutally sad movie.
SilentDawn (4.5★) · 646 likes
85/100
(35mm)
As towering as it is confined. Grand rigs of machinery against big blue skies and expressive, haunted faces lost within the grain. Distant to a fault, admittedly, but its portraits are miraculously textured and Jack Nicholson (at a career peak here) swims right into your soul.
Travis Lytle (4★) · 631 likes
Bob Rafelson's "Five Easy Pieces" is a character-driven drama about a man unwilling to connect or commit, actively pushing away family, friends, and talent. Leisurely paced and eschewing all but subtle plotting, the film succeeds thanks to an easy energy, an unobtrusive style, and a fitting cast.
Jack Nicholson stars as Robert Dupea. A man who shrugged off a potential life of wealth, Dupea drifts into work on an oil rig. When his father's health begins to fail, Dupea returns… more
Nakul (4.5★) · 630 likes
"You're a strange person, Robert. I mean, what will you come to? If a person has no love for himself, no respect for himself, no love of his friends, family, work, something - how can he ask for love in return? I mean, why should he ask for it?"
Five Easy Pieces will hover in your psyche for a long time after you see it. A deeply sad character study about 70s alienation & the society spiraling out of control. Nicholson… more
Will Sloan · 541 likes
Jack is so charismatic I forgot that his character fuckin sucks in this. A complete loser.