What's the difference between a hard-nosed
business man and a criminal thug?
According to Robert Altman in McCabe and Mrs.
Miller, not much. Although Altman may carry this thesis a tad too
far, he is getting at the central fallacy in the Repug/Libertarian
notion that government and regulation is bad per se. Carried to
its extreme conclusion, one is left with a Darwinian world where
the biggest, baddest, strongest prevails.
This is a Western. No doubt about it. The
frontier is integral to this story and is practically a character
in and of itself. This story would not be the same without the
extreme environment, hardship, and lawlessness. It is a realistic
Western that dipicts the seamier side of the frontier: sexual
slavery, brutality, and the criminality of the mining companies.
They didn't call them "robber barons"
for nothing. Was it Tolstoy who said that behind every great
fortune is a great crime? Even if it was not Tolstoy, I don't
think the adage is quite accurate. Instead, behind every great
fortune is a series of little crimes is more accurate.
The murder of Carradine was pointless and
senseless. I didn't quite buy it. But I guess every mid seventies
movie has to have a senseless act of violence in it somewhere.
The initial Christie monologue on the logistics
of running a whore house is one of the best things I have ever
seen. And Beatty's reactions were priceless. The look on his face
when she asks, "who's gonna skin 'em back to check for clap?
You?" is ROTFLMAO funny.
Finally, the difference between a criminal thug
and a hard-nosed business man is one has the law, the courts and
the politicians in his pocket.
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