The players in this comic character sketch deserve better than they got. First, the story is confusing. Paul Newman as a naive cattle buyer in Mexico, working for Strother Martin and Wayne Rogers, is able to keep track of all his expenses in a little notebook, but I got lost in the negotiations. Lee Marvin is Newman's pal, guiding him through the vending process, showing him around, and exchanging philosophical wisecracks with him.
Second, the situations in which this richly talented pair of actors find themselves are just not very funny or engaging. At the end of each scene, I kept waiting for the payoff and there simply weren't any. The movie itself abruptly ends in the middle of a conversation that I thought was part of the plot development. A freeze frame leaves the two men lounging at a deserted railway station with nothing to say, no place to go, and no money to pay for getting there. Everything is left hanging.
And the two principal characters aren't particularly endearing. Newman is a somewhat shy but highly principled buyer. He brings the right kind of physicality to the part -- his expressions and gestures -- but he tries for a suitable vocal frame that just isn't there, and he comes out sounding like an adolescent on a second-rate TV sitcom. What smiles there are in the film come exclusively from Lee Marvin. All right, he's played sleazy characters before, but he's introduced to us lying in bed in a shabby Mexican hotel, his trousers down around his rear end, suffering from a horrific hangover. And he underplays it this time. (Well, underplays it for Lee Marvin, anyway.) "You'd be doing me a favor," he tells Newman, "if you'd just put a bullet through my head." When he tries to wash his face, he reaches blindly for the soap and grabs a pigeon instead, and his hands and fingers flutter alarmingly as if at the approach of death. Newman and Marvin work well enough together. It's just that they're given nothing much to do, nor has the dialog any sparkle.
Many of the scenes just look pointless. They herd the cattle to Hermosillo and at night Newman claims he hears someone nosing around the animals and cursing. He borrows Marvin's Luger, steps into the bushes, and fires a few shots into the air. The next day Marvin lets one of their vaqueros sniff the barrel and remarks that it's just been fired within the last few hours. What's the point of the scene? To scare the vaqueros into thinking that they'll be shot if they try to run off with a cow or two? If that's it, it gets as lost as the rest of the script. If this is an attempt to coast along on the notion of bringing Newman and Marvin together -- as Newman and Redford had been together in the blockbuster "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" -- it doesn't work. "Butch and Sundance" had a story to tell and a go-to-hell anachronistic wit in its script. Stuart Rosenberg's direction ("Cool Hand Luke") is pedestrian here.
The photography by Laszlo Kovacs is colorful and evocative. The score, by Alex North and others, is all over the place -- Carole King, Burt Bacharachish, a wistful solo harmonica, and Dixieland. The meandering script is by John Gay and Terry Malick. Meanders aren't, in themselves, to be objurgated. Malick wrote and directed "Badlands," an episodic film filled with non sequiturs that was, in its quiet way, superb. But, again, while "Badlands" had a beginning, a middle, and an end, "Pocket Money" seems all middle. Everyone here seems to have enjoyed themselves on a Mexican vacation but the resulting film has only a slight charm.
Second, the situations in which this richly talented pair of actors find themselves are just not very funny or engaging. At the end of each scene, I kept waiting for the payoff and there simply weren't any. The movie itself abruptly ends in the middle of a conversation that I thought was part of the plot development. A freeze frame leaves the two men lounging at a deserted railway station with nothing to say, no place to go, and no money to pay for getting there. Everything is left hanging.
And the two principal characters aren't particularly endearing. Newman is a somewhat shy but highly principled buyer. He brings the right kind of physicality to the part -- his expressions and gestures -- but he tries for a suitable vocal frame that just isn't there, and he comes out sounding like an adolescent on a second-rate TV sitcom. What smiles there are in the film come exclusively from Lee Marvin. All right, he's played sleazy characters before, but he's introduced to us lying in bed in a shabby Mexican hotel, his trousers down around his rear end, suffering from a horrific hangover. And he underplays it this time. (Well, underplays it for Lee Marvin, anyway.) "You'd be doing me a favor," he tells Newman, "if you'd just put a bullet through my head." When he tries to wash his face, he reaches blindly for the soap and grabs a pigeon instead, and his hands and fingers flutter alarmingly as if at the approach of death. Newman and Marvin work well enough together. It's just that they're given nothing much to do, nor has the dialog any sparkle.
Many of the scenes just look pointless. They herd the cattle to Hermosillo and at night Newman claims he hears someone nosing around the animals and cursing. He borrows Marvin's Luger, steps into the bushes, and fires a few shots into the air. The next day Marvin lets one of their vaqueros sniff the barrel and remarks that it's just been fired within the last few hours. What's the point of the scene? To scare the vaqueros into thinking that they'll be shot if they try to run off with a cow or two? If that's it, it gets as lost as the rest of the script. If this is an attempt to coast along on the notion of bringing Newman and Marvin together -- as Newman and Redford had been together in the blockbuster "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" -- it doesn't work. "Butch and Sundance" had a story to tell and a go-to-hell anachronistic wit in its script. Stuart Rosenberg's direction ("Cool Hand Luke") is pedestrian here.
The photography by Laszlo Kovacs is colorful and evocative. The score, by Alex North and others, is all over the place -- Carole King, Burt Bacharachish, a wistful solo harmonica, and Dixieland. The meandering script is by John Gay and Terry Malick. Meanders aren't, in themselves, to be objurgated. Malick wrote and directed "Badlands," an episodic film filled with non sequiturs that was, in its quiet way, superb. But, again, while "Badlands" had a beginning, a middle, and an end, "Pocket Money" seems all middle. Everyone here seems to have enjoyed themselves on a Mexican vacation but the resulting film has only a slight charm.