Prime Cut
Picture: B Sound:
B Extras: D Film: B
The early 1970s were a great time for crime movies, and Prime
Cut is one of the unsung titles from the period that has aged incredibly
well three decades later. In this contemporary age of special-effects
driven nonsense and invincible comic-book heroes, it's always comforting
for me to go back to a time when we had a regular diet of hard-boiled
movies about real men doing manly things. These were tough
guys without superpowers who could only depend on their guns, fists and
wits. Movies and society have become so feminized and obsessed with
political correctness since the early 1970s that it makes you wonder if we'll
ever see a prime piece of machismo like Prime Cut ever again. I
sure hope so.
Directed by Michael Ritchie (who's best remember for comedies such
as The Bad News Bears, Semi-Tough and the two Fletch movies),
Prime Cut is as tough as a nickel steak. It's the tightly
told story of a clash between rival underworld factions. Gene Hackman
plays a Kansas tycoon named Mary Ann (yes, Mary Ann), who runs
a meat-packing business with his half-wit hulk of a brother, and
dabbles in drugs and prostitution on the side. Mary Ann owes money
to an Irish gangster in Chicago, but doesn't want to pay up. However, the
last henchman the Irishman sent to collect the debt ended up being sent back to
Chicago as a pack of hot dogs. This forces the Irish crime boss to hire
one of the best in the business, a free-lance hit man named Delaney (Lee Marvin
in cooler-than-cool mode) to try and collect the loot. Delaney also
discovers what's essentially a female slavery ring run by Mary
Ann that exploits young orphaned women. Marvin's hit man with a
heart of gold then takes it upon himself to save one of the young women
(future Oscar-winner Sissy Spacek) from bondage.
Prime Cut is a simple yet sometime oblique
film where not every detail is spelled out. With a
quick 86-minute running time, it's a good example
of efficient cut-to-the-chase storytelling, but I'd have
appreciated a few more specifics. What
sets Prime Cut apart from other gangster flicks is that most
of it unfolds in a rural setting among cornfields, cows and county
fairs. It also gives us the pleasure of watching Oscar-winners Marvin and
Hackman, both former U.S. Marines in real life, go mano-a-mano. The
biggest mystery of all, though, remains how a cowboy thug like Hackman's
character ended up with the feminine name of Mary Ann? A brief
explanation would have been greatly appreciated, but the film
never addresses the origins of such an odd name. Johnny Cash had a
hit song called "A Boy Named Sue" about a father who purposely
gives his son a female name so he'll grow up fighting and become a tough
guy. That's the only plausible explanation I can fathom for a man
named Mary Ann.
A CBS production distributed theatrically by National General
Pictures in 1972, Prime Cut was released on home video 20 years ago by
Key Video, and has been long out of print since. But Paramount has
given the 2.35:1 Panavision film a nice anamorphic widescreen
transfer with Dolby Digital 5.1 surround sound. The picture is surprisingly color rich,
while the remix from the original monophonic sound is not bad for the film’s
age. Now film buffs will be able to see Prime Cut the way it was
intended for the first time in 33 years. We can only cross our fingers
and hope that Paramount will give a couple of other long overdue
crime gems from the early '70s (The Friends of Eddie Coyle and Badge
373) the same DVD treatment in the very near future. The biggest
disappointment of the Prime Cut DVD is the total lack of
extras. A theatrical trailer and a poster gallery are always much
appreciated on such bargain-priced catalog titles.
- Chuck O'Leary
