Cisco Pike

A thin plot, a lot of music, a circuitous narrative, rising disillusion. The easy ride ended in failure and the time came to ease up on the self-assurance and turn a critical eye to the preceding years. The post-hippie process of getting sober hadn’t yet been completed and anyone who wanted to could accuse Cisco Pike of depicting the adoration of soft drugs and their dealers. Nevertheless, the shift away from earlier films emitting the fragrance of cannabis is best seen in the characters. Kristofferson, making his official debut, authentically slacks off on screen as a burnt-out musician forced to collaborate with an undercover cop who no longer embodies the ridiculed or fear-inducing authority figure, i.e. a man against whom laid-back liberals could define themselves. Hackman’s character is not a bad guy from somewhere else, but rather one of those who once belonged to the group and only the whiff of a new opportunity made him betray his previous ideals and stray from the path. Like Cisco and his partner, he could reminisce about the good old days with the nostalgia intrinsic to late-period (Peckinpah-style) westerns. The years when they were respected, when they were somebody. But it wasn’t industrial development that destroyed them, but drugs, drink and dames. Cisco Pike is quite deservedly overshadowed by many similarly conceived minor films by major directors of the same period (Fat City, The Long Goodbye, Night Moves), but it is probably the best work of Bill L. Norton’s later, mostly television, filmography. 70% (26.08.2014)