A convicted murderer (Gene Hackman), along with his cellmate (Mickey Rooney), is helped to escape out of prison by a mysterious "behind the scenes" organization pulling strings. His contact (Richard Widmark) sends him to Mexico where he is reunited with his wife (Candice Bergen). But soon it's time to pay the piper and it's a high price to pay. Poor Stanley Kramer! In the late 1950s and early 1960s, he was a prestigious film maker making movies on "important" subjects. By the 1970s, he was pretty much irrelevant. This attempt to cash in on the paranoid conspiracy thrillers popular at the time lacks credibility. It's a clunky example of the genre, the film's opening is so stupid that it needs to be seen to be believed. The film is based on a novel by Adam Kennedy who adapted his book for the screen but surely Mr. Kennedy's book couldn't have been this awkward. One can excuse Bergen's poor performance because she's miscast but Hackman, Widmark (even his Tommy Udo laugh can't save him here), Rooney as well as Eli Wallach and Edward Albert have no such excuse. The film is so sloppy that loopholes and loose ends make it impossible to make sense of. The film does look great however thanks to the posh lensing by Ernest Laszlo and Fred J. Koenkamp. With Neva Patterson, Ken Swofford and Jay Novello.
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