This fast-moving crime caper proves that you just can't change horses in midstream. You can't establish a mood and then kill it, even if your star's Clint Eastwood. Michael (The Deer Hunter) Cimino's debut film starts off as a cheery and eccentric comedy-thriller about a bank robber (Eastwood), pursued by a semi-comic fellow crook (George Kennedy), who thinks he has been double-crossed, and aided by a wild young fella (Oscar-nominated Jeff Bridges), whom he eventually cuts in on his next robbery. The dialogue fairly crackles along for the first hour: 'Remember not to pick your teeth,' Eastwood advises Bridges when he puts his finger in some raccoon dung. There's sharp establishment of character and fine photography too, against Idaho skies that always seem blue. As night falls, though, the strangest thing happens: the film abruptly becomes among the crudest, most vicious and nastiest dramas to stalk the screen. What a film Cimino might have had, though, if he'd kept looking to the lighter side.

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