Prime Cut (1972)

Prime Cut is a strangely likeable if decidedly oddball thriller from 1972. A happy collision of gangster genre grit (validated by Lee Marvin's granite-faced lead performance) with a strain of shameless (though shrewd) exploitation not unfamiliar to screenwriter Robert Dillon (X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes), plus the kinetic, semi-documentary wit of director Michael Ritchie (The Candidate) makes Prime Cut both a straightforward noir and a satire of itself. Marvin plays Nick, an aging enforcer for the Chicago mob, sent to Kansas City to deal with a ruthless cattle baron (Gene Hackman) who owes a half-million to Windy City racketeers. Hackman's character (inexplicably named Mary Ann), dismissive of old-guard crime chieftains, has set up his own heartland empire guarded by a weird contingent of blond, lookalike young men with rifles. Not only does he render the bodies of his enemies into sausage meat, Mary Ann is making a fortune trafficking in naked, enslaved young women. One of the latter, played by Sissy Spacek (in her film debut), falls under the protection of Nick, who sets about taking Mary Ann down. Ritchie's highly energized, absurdist scenes (e.g., a gunfight in an endless field of sunflowers) are nicely counterpointed by Marvin's smooth anti-heroics and the self-conscious cheesiness of the sex slave angle. --Tom Keogh