Movie · 1973 · Drama, Comedy · 1h 44m · R · English
Curator score: 8.3/10 (75.5K ratings)
No *#@!!* Navy’s going to give some poor **!!@* kid eight years in the #@!* brig without me taking him out for the time of his *#@!!* life.
Overview
Two Navy men are ordered to bring a young offender to prison, but decide to show him one last good time along the way.
Ratings
Curator score: 8.3/10
IMDb: 7.5/10
Letterboxd: 3.93/5
Rotten Tomatoes: 87%
Metacritic: 86
TMDB: 7.0/10
Director
Hal Ashby
Production
Acrobat Productions, Bright-Persky Associates
Cast
Jack Nicholson, Otis Young, Randy Quaid, Clifton James, Carol Kane, Michael Moriarty, Luana Anders, Kathleen Miller, Nancy Allen, Gerry Salsberg, Don McGovern, Patricia Hamilton, Michael Chapman, Jim Henshaw, Gilda Radner, Derek McGrath, Jim Horn, John Castellano
Curator Review
Verdict
A sharp, melancholy buddy dramedy that turns a simple Navy errand into a funny, bitter road movie about masculinity, authority, and the small humiliations of life. Jack Nicholson is magnetic, but the film’s real strength is how it lets camaraderie and resignation coexist.
Best for
fans of 1970s American character-driven dramas
viewers who like dark comedy with emotional bite
people drawn to anti-authority stories and military settings
fans of road movies and hangout films with a sad streak
Skip if
you want a plot-heavy or highly eventful story
you dislike abrasive profanity and crude humor
you prefer cleanly sentimental buddy movies
you are not in the mood for cynicism, futility, or downbeat endings
Overview
Hal Ashby turns a routine military assignment into a loose, bruised, and often very funny portrait of male friendship under pressure. What begins as a simple transport job becomes a drifting tour through bars, trains, and bad decisions, with the film constantly balancing mischief against the sense that everyone involved already knows how this ends.
Worth noting
Nicholson gives the movie its voltage, but the film is more than a star vehicle. It has the lived-in rhythm of a road picture and the moral unease of a post-Vietnam American drama, where authority feels arbitrary and decency arrives in awkward, half-formed gestures. The humor is rowdy, but the sadness lands hard.
Bottom line
Its best scenes are the small ones: the drunken logistics, the petty rituals, the moments when masculine bluster briefly gives way to tenderness or exhaustion. The result is a film that feels funny, angry, and strangely compassionate all at once.
Top Letterboxd reviews
Karsten (4★) · 1323 likes
the 60 seconds where they’re drunk and exhausted while trying to set up a cot is 10/10
Sally Jane Black · 943 likes
As Young and Nicholson walk away from their final, anticlimactic confrontation, the barbs in this film become fully felt. It's a statement of futility, and it feels like a shrug of disappointment and resignation.
Forty years on, the sentiment feels odd coming from a film featuring three masculine military seamen when there's a stereotype of the era this film was commenting on that was anti-military, pro-flowerchild, even if it came out a little after. Or to put it another way,… more
Willow Maclay (4★) · 725 likes
What's better than this? guys being dudes.
Joe (5★) · 569 likes
"I am the fucking shore patrol, motherfucker!"
UPDATE: It has come to my attention that the above line is an oft-quoted piece of Jack Nicholson's performance in this movie, and was thus a hacky choice for a Letterboxd one-liner. I apologize to my family and to my Letterboxd followers for this grievous oversight. I can't expect to earn your forgiveness right away, but as a step in the right direction I offer this alternate quotation instead:
"Drop your socks and grab your cocks, we're going to a party."
Laura (4★) · 540 likes
love is sending your buddy’s burger back so they melt the cheese when he is too afraid to ask himself!!