So implausible I had a hard time taking it seriously
OK it was a 1972 movie, but so was The Godfather, and that was a wonderfully executed masterpiece of storytelling with nary a weak moment nor one that required any suspension of credulity.
But this!
OK it starts out with this gawky country girl who appears to be unaware of her new found sexuality as she unknowingly tittilates a rail gang by scratching her bare thigh while watching her daredevil pilot father buzz the field.
Dad dies in a wholly unconvincing crash that is attended by four wholly unconvincingly acting bystanders, who for unknown reasons break into two separate pair of fist-fighting men. Huh?
Virginal naive daughter runs off in her grief, and hops into a boxcar that is occupied by one of the men from the previous scene, who promptly basically rapes the girl, who said girl takes about three seconds going from outraged resistance to joyful participation in the act, then once she falls asleep he abandons her.
Waking alone and naked to the world in the straw strewn boxcar, she finds he has left some her money stuffed into her shoe, like a whore. Of course this means that she now loves him, which she demonstrates by accepting his embrace in lieu of her newest suiter, the next time fate finds them all in a similar boxcar!
The scenes just kept up a non-stop flow of improbabilities and illogical activity that somehow always comes out the way the participants expect.
EG: Bill and company are in a prison farm detail working outdoors. Bertha drives by the guard in a car and stopping a short distance away, punctures a tire with her umbrella! (ever try such a thing?) The guard, charmed by Bertha's appearance, goes over and offers to change out the tire. He does this and then is drawn to sit and chat with the sexy lass and we wonder how she is going to (as is obvious by this time) use the ruse to spring her man.
We don't wait long. It is accomplished by the totally unchained (as are all the prisoners despite there being but a single guard for all thirty at least of them) Bill running up behind the guard from a distance of at least a hundred feet, which the guard cannot hear happening for some reason, and braining him with a shovel! Then the prisoners all hop in the car and leave!
No pre-planning, all these things just happen like clockwork. How unlikely.
Then the pursuing sheriff, having happened upon the fleeing carload of felons and despite his driving a much newer and presumably better handling vehicle, cannot catch them and drives in a ridiculously inept manner, resulting in a spectacular wreck by flying and tumbling over a cliff.
Of course instead of being grevously injured, he emerges staggering and soaking wet like a Keystone Cop, making him a convenient source of laughs and reinforcing the notion that this criminal group are not dangerous but actually just harmless pranksters.
No, I found the acting to be horrible and hammy, the directing erratic and amateurish, and the characters just unbelievable.
Scorcese went on to direct such masterpieces that it is hard to imagine his hand in this appalling excercise.
I surely can't praise it just because Marty's name is on it.