Altman the absolute 60s hack
The thing that startles one about this garbage movie, is the use of star lens covers to create stupid fake patterns in the helmet visor reflections. Nothing could be so revealing of Altman the complete and utter hack director, who somehow, in his drug-addled visions, managed to convince people in the 70s that he was "deep". What a joke! He's a total zero, a TV man who managed to fake his way into the big time, and then bamboozle the critics into some sort of imagined depth. He can't tell a story, he can't do dialog (only polylog), he can't frame a shot, he rambles on and on - he's Michael Cimino minus 10 years.
As time goes on, the Altman oeuvre gets more and more dated, and more and more appears as self-generated wanking. This hateful film was prophetic, in that it showed the real Altman, the small-screen man with no sense of story-telling or editing or really anything cinematic.
-drl