This bleak crime story earns instant cult movie credibility with one of the great casts of the 1970s. Any film with Harry Dean Stanton and M. Emmet Walsh and Theresa Russell and Gary Busey in it belongs on your radar. Oh, and Dustin Hoffman’s here, too. He’s terrifically wounded as an ex-convict out on parole who gets wrapped up in crime again. He starts out wanting to go straight, but finds he can’t stomach the indignities of a life where no one trusts him and his soulless parole officer is constantly looking up his ass.
It’s based on ex-con Edward Bunker’s debut novel, No Beast So Fierce, and it sticks closely to the book’s plot and effect. The film’s Max Dembo is a little dumber than the novel’s Max Dembo, but the film does an admirable job overall of sketching out the brutal paranoia of both the parolee life and the criminal life. It’s not romantic. It’s not pretty. It’s nothing you want a piece of.
Dustin Hoffman was originally going to direct this, but he changed his mind and passed that role onto Ulu Grosbard. Edward Bunker has a small acting part as an old fatcat crook who sets up a theft job for Hoffman.