Slachterij

An agricultural gangster flick from backwoods Kansas that only has two good scenes. The opening one with the making of Irish sausages, where the saying "what the eyes don't see, the stomach doesn't grieve" definitely applies, and then the drive toward the storm and revenge, accompanied by some badass music and assembling a Smith & Wesson Model 76. While Hackman’s sausage magnate feasting on giblets is criminally underused, Marvin, who plays a slightly-pedophile Professor Higgins here, is just too much. I never understood his tough-guy aura. At forty-eight, he already looks like a retired Floridian pensioner. (29.11.2022)

Once again, I have to fundamentally disagree with the majority, but this gangster film really didn't sit well with me. It could have been a decent movie, considering the theme of a clash between a rough gang in the countryside, full of energy, ambition, and ruthlessness, and a criminal group that has long lost its drive and lives off its past. But the creators turned it into a personal showdown between Lee Marvin and Gene Hackman, giving their characters a very unreliable dimension. It has been a long time since I felt such a significant mismatch between what I would do as a film character and what the characters were doing on screen. Several key scenes, which were supposed to naturally escalate tension, came across as unintentionally funny to me. Even where the mobster Devlin was supposed to evoke sympathy in the viewer with acts of humanity, it felt inappropriate to me. In the real world, his character, who exuded unjustified and incomprehensible confidence, would have been killed after just a few hours in Kansas. One star is for the cast. Alongside Marvin and Hackman, Sissy Spacek is worth mentioning, whom I know more as a mature character actress rather than a sensual femme fatale. Overall impression: 25%. (20.09.2010)