Word: goin
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Jackson have a reason for their music that should quiet all the suspicious speculation about their art. Scott-Heron summed it up in a verse from "Angola, Louisiana": "This song may not reach a whole lot of people persuaded by the truth/But take a look at what's goin' on 'cause it could happen to you." He is so right...
...WATCHING GOIN' SOUTH makes you think Burt Reynolds must have had something to do with it. The cutting one-liners are tossed off with a certain macho flair, the male lead is yet another in a series of adorable scoundrel types, and the woman is one more unfulfilled, sublimated prude who all too willingly gives herself up to the irresistible charms of a confirmed ne'er-do-well. The film, in fact, aspires to little more than giving the audience a good belly laugh every 15 minutes or so. Your funny bone is taken good care of, all right...
Perhaps the most unfortunate feature of Goin' South is its unfulfilled potential. Nicholson cast John Belushi in a minor role as a Mexican deputy sheriff of Longhorn, and the possibilities of this team could have been endless. Instead, Belushi pops up in only a few scenes where he can show off his Mexican accent and look sleazy. Expanding the part, or casting Belushi in a more prominent role, might well have saved the movie from becoming a low-budget exercise in the training of Jack Nicholson, director. But that's just how it wound up: filming more of the familiar...
...actor's motive for making this movie is not impossible to figure out. Goin' South does provide him with the funniest -and possibly the most enjoyable-role he's ever had. Henry Moon, the film's Texas outlaw hero, can take his place alongside Lee Marvin in Cat Ballou, John Wayne in True Grit and Jason Robards in The Ballad of Cable Hogue. A good-hearted rogue with slovenly personal habits, Moon is the essence of frontier vulgarity. He gobbles meals in a single bite, guzzles booze as if it were mother's milk...
...Goin' South's script, set just after the Civil War, is essentially an extended two-character sketch. The other role is Julia Tate (Mary Steenburgen), a frigid young spinster whose odd habits include hanging up chairs on wall hooks. Julia weds Moon in a marriage of convenience: she needs someone to work her unsuccessful gold mine, while he needs a respectable wife to shield him from the law. The thin story traces the predictable warming up of their relationship. Pretty soon the film becomes a string of uneven set pieces, the best of which suggest Nichols...