Scarecrow (1973)

***½

"The road leads itself to somewhere."

This weird but wonderfully enjoyable film stars Gene Hackman and Al Pacino as two lost souls, totally different in character, who become partners and travel east to start up their own car wash business.
They meet by the side of the road and compete against each other at hitch-hiking. After they both fail to nab a ride, Lion (Pacino) offers Max (Hackman) his last match as Max's lighter has broken. This kind gesture amuses Max and a friendship is then born.

The major downside I have with this film is with the character of Lion. He tries to be funny at every opportunity and just ends up annoying me for the most part. Whether or not this was the intention of the Director, I just don't know but it started to eat away at me after a while, just needless attempts at comedy and bad jokes. On the other side of it you have an absolutely fantastic performance from Hackman. He's unstable but loyal, and someone who loves to get into a fight at any given moment.
I've never seen someone wear as many clothes as Hackman does in this one though, he must have 12 shirts on in each scene. It totally saves him carrying it around in a case the whole time I guess.

I was very surprised to see Richard Lynch turn up too as Riley, an inmate at a correctional facility that the two have to spend a month at, after Max got into a pub brawl defending the honour of his new girlfriend.
As per usual he plays a creep, inviting at first he takes the young Lion under his wing and offers him stardom, only for him to want a little 'man love' in return. Lion doesn't respond too well to the advances of Riley and tries to stick up for himself. This leaves him with one of the worst faces i've ever seen, he gets the living shit kicked out of him. Have no fear though, because Max soon finds out and repays the favour ten fold on Riley as payback for his partner.

While watching the DVD of this film I couldn't help notice how badly it had been edited. I honestly thought parts were missing from it, it seemed to jump scenes very quickly and even plot developments some times. This may have been a dodgy disc but the run time looked fine. Very odd.

Overall this is a pretty solid buddy flick about dreams and ultimately reality. I never saw the ending coming in a million years, it's pretty heartbreaking stuff. I don't want to spoil anything so i'll leave it at that.