Word: lummox
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...Deerfield sound like heavy going. Director Pollack has almost flawlessly understated its case. The Europe through which his couple move is one of soft colors, handsome but not overawing. And in Al Pacino he has one of the few actors who can play narcissism without seeming to be a lummox, while Marthe Keller finds a steely spine in her characterization of what might have been your standard movie kook. She is vulnerable without being pathetic, compelling without being neurotic...
...most popular, if not most highly acclaimed, U.S. woman authors in the past half-century; in Manhattan. To many critics she was the sob sister of American letters, and her 30 novels and countless short stories little more than glorified True Confessions pap-orphan servant girls (Lummox, 1923), the secret love of a married man (Back Street, 1930), mother love (Imitation of Life, 1933). But her novels sold many millions of copies, and magazines paid $70,000 for the serial rights. "What success I enjoy," she once said, "comes from my inner convictions, which are little soul-tapers lighting...
...crew, which seems to stand for the U.S. public, is shown as a lazy collective lummox that just wants to live comfortably. The captain (Richard Crenna), who talks like a Jules Feiffer caricature of Lyndon Baines Jingo, acts at the critical juncture like a militaristic maniac. The hero (Steve McQueen), who is known as Holman, but let that pass, is apparently intended to symbolize fine young men who die in battle needlessly...
...packs a bit too much levity into it, so that transitions between ludicrousness and anxiety sometimes come off awkwardly. But neither mood overpowers the other, and the pulse of Pinter's story never misses a beat. Dustin Hoffman and Paul Benedict are well-matched as the brains-and-lummox partners; only Hoffman's antics occasionally smack of Kellogg's Cornflakes, and he tends to mix up his Cockney with Brooklynese...
Surely, also, Audrey is provided with ample opportunities for her patented doe-eyed scream. Four graphic corpses, I am told, put in an appearance. The first (Audrey's hubby) is tossed battered from a speeding train. The second (a mountainous lummox with a hook where his right hand oughta be) we discover face up and fish lipped in an overflowing bathtub. Number three (a balding dry-goodsman from the Bronx or someplace) gets his throat most ostentatiously slashed in an early-morning elevator. The last is an evil-tempered Texan named, curiously enough, "Tex." Audrey finds him bound head...