I am not a heroin addict but having seen enough and read enough I know that when you really need a fix - - it's like being tortured within. Now whether or not this movie intended to be in itself like a method actor and torture the audience just as the characters are being tortured by waiting for their fix, I am not sure, but in that it works, it is torture, it is horrible, it is staged, and the acting is over-the-top and too obvious. I sought after this film because it stars Warren Finnerty who plays the "Rancher" in "Easy Rider", and I was always amazed at how he was so good in that role, it didn't even seem as if he were acting. I had to see him in something else, and that something else is this movie where he overacts and does a Brando impression that was downright silly. I also wanted to see William Redfield who played "Harding" in "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest", and in this he plays a square director filming junkies, and his acting might be worse than Finnerty. An actor named Gary Goodrow is also in the cast, and he's usually a comedic actor and he played a junkie like Paul Lynde would play a coke head. This movie needed a John Cassavetes or Vic Morrow or Dennis Hopper or Timothy Carey, and also needed to seem more real and to have dialog that mirrored real people talking, not a bunch of actors trading off monologues. It was like watching a bunch of method actors trying too hard to be real, and in doing so, it comes across contrived and totally unbelievable. It was like watching a troupe of actors rehearsing, and badly at that. Simply horrendous. The jazz music, played by real musicians, was quite good though.
Review of The Connection
