Getting out of prison after 12 years doesn't indicate any change for convicted bank robber John Cassavetes, immediately getting into a plot to blow up a brand new Vegas casino, hired by Peter Falk (whom he doesn't share any scenes with) through his own son, Pierluigi Apra. Falk wants to buy into this new Vegas hotspot, not realizing that the money men who actually own it are New York City mobsters he's been involved with in the past. Along the way, Cassavetes becomes involved with a girl he rescued in a San Francisco bar, Britt Ekland, bedding and marrying her within days of meeting her.
Somehow he leaves Alcatraz and ends up on the other side of the Golden Gate Bridge (I guess there wasn't any express boat for Alcatraz inmates directly to the city by the bay), and immediately begins starting trouble by getting into a fight with the men bartering over Ekland. Cassavetes and Ekland exchange vows in Vegas wedding chapel (complete with organ accompanying the touching but quick ceremony), with him trying to create a relationship with the grown son he's only meant twice.
Real life wife Gena Rowlands has a great cameo as his Gloria-like ex-wife, and in spite of how her appearance in the film comes to an end, I couldn't get her 1980 movie character out of my head while watching her. This is a fun piece of sordid and trashy mob lives, featuring one of the worst movie themes I've ever heard, but the pace is fast and the atmosphere delightfully gauche. Cassavetes. While it was Giuliano Montaldo directing, not Cassavetes, there are elements of it that appear similar to other films he directed. Too bad though he didn't have at least one scene with Falk whose character sporadically appears but doesn't have any resolution in the plot.
Somehow he leaves Alcatraz and ends up on the other side of the Golden Gate Bridge (I guess there wasn't any express boat for Alcatraz inmates directly to the city by the bay), and immediately begins starting trouble by getting into a fight with the men bartering over Ekland. Cassavetes and Ekland exchange vows in Vegas wedding chapel (complete with organ accompanying the touching but quick ceremony), with him trying to create a relationship with the grown son he's only meant twice.
Real life wife Gena Rowlands has a great cameo as his Gloria-like ex-wife, and in spite of how her appearance in the film comes to an end, I couldn't get her 1980 movie character out of my head while watching her. This is a fun piece of sordid and trashy mob lives, featuring one of the worst movie themes I've ever heard, but the pace is fast and the atmosphere delightfully gauche. Cassavetes. While it was Giuliano Montaldo directing, not Cassavetes, there are elements of it that appear similar to other films he directed. Too bad though he didn't have at least one scene with Falk whose character sporadically appears but doesn't have any resolution in the plot.