Good, Depressing, Quintessential 70's Buddy Movie

In the early seventies, the "buddy movie" reigned supreme.

The reason was that Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid was the biggest hit of 1969, and Hollywood always copycats itself.

Suddenly, there were all these movies about men in pairs or groups and they called them "buddy movies." Sutherland and Gould in MASH, Gould and Segal in California Split, Gould and Caan in Harry and Walter Go to New York. Redford and Segal in The Hot Rock, Redford and Hoffman in All the President's Men, Redford and Newman AGAIN in The Sting. And Hoffman and McQueen in Papillon. And McQueen and Newman in The Towering Inferno. And Newman and Lee Marvin in Pocket Money. And Connery and Caine in The Man Who Would Be King. And even the Three Guys in Jaws.

The buddies didn't always have to BE buddies, BTW. They might not get along(Jaws)or started in conflict and then liked each other(All the President's Men, The Sting.) But they were "buddied up" for the movie.

"Scarecrow" was a buddy movie. Of sorts. It was also a road movie. Definitely. And it got two stars when they were really hot: Gene Hackman, coming off The French Connection and Best Actor PLUS The Poseidon Adventure, Pacino coming off The Godfather.

But the "twist" of "Scarecrow" -- even in the gritty seventies -- is that as buddy movies went, this was one sad, depressing and edgy buddy movie, in which the buddies seemed dangerously mismatched, with a volcanic, hair-trigger Hackman paired with a sweet and slightly befuddled Pacino. In the first half of the film, one waited nervously for Hackman to just go ape on Pacino and beat him up. (On the other hand, we pick up that Hackman -- who loves to fight -- sees Pacino as just too weak and innocent to do anything to other than befriend, as best he can.)

"Scarecrow" was also tough minded enough to create Max and Lion(Hackman and Pacino) as dwellers of America's lower class...truly struggling, jobless, neither of them terribly bright beyond their street smarts. And each of them is mentally ill to some degree, which one's worse...the story finally tells us. These guys are NOT the "romantic rogues" of Butch Cassidy and The Sting. We worry about them in fights. We worry about their mental health. We worry for OTHER people around them. I suppose these buddies are most in line with the bottom-dwellers played by Jon Voight and Dustin Hoffman in Midnight Cowboy; Hoffman could have played Pacino's role here.

"Scarecrow" remains a fascinating watch today because the studios just aren't making them like this anymore. This kind of downbeat tale goes to the indies.

And yet..Hackman and Pacino clearly did this one as a labor of love -- it WAS like an indie in terms of low box office expectations: their blockbusters had EARNED them the right to play these mean and/or sad characters in a movie where not much happens and most scenes barely have any plot at all.

The key turning point in the movie was "R-rated" in terms of dealing with how Pacino's vulnerability finally exposes him to male sexual violence and how Hackman becomes his fightin' savior. Things rather turn into a love story here -- brotherly love.

And a climax does arrive, dramatic and devastating...with a touch of hope at the coda(rare for a seventies downer.)

But most of this movie rambles and shambles and gives us a look back at Pacino AND Hackman when they were younger men(Hackman reveals here that he DID have sex appeal, WAS fairly handsome) and the cinema world was profoundly different.