Product Description

Two unemployed men become the targets of a hit man whom they disarmed during a robbery attempt in this comic runaway adventure. Studio: Sony Pictures Home Ent Release Date: 05/13/2008 Starring: Robin Williams Walter Matthau Run time: 102 minutes Rating: R

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #15974 in DVD
• Brand: Sony
• Released on: 2002-04-23
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
• Formats: Closed-captioned, Color, Dubbed, DVD, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English, Spanish
• Subtitled in: Chinese, English, French, Korean, Portuguese, Spanish
• Dubbed in: French
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 102 minutes

Amazon.com
At the height of urban paranoia and the birth of survivalist movement in the 1980s, director Michael Ritchie decided to team Robin Williams and Walter Matthau. Talk about an odd couple; yet it actually might have worked, with Matthau's hang-dog deadpan and Williams's manic energy, were it not for a limp script by Michael Leeson. Williams and Matthau play two victims of Reaganomics, unemployed acquaintances who witness a robbery and identify one of the participants to the police, an act that turns them into targets for the robber in question, who comes looking for them. Williams's response: become a one-man arsenal and join a training camp for militant survivalists. But the comedy is neither sharp enough nor sufficiently smart to pull it off; Matthau is the calm center while Williams's comedy rockets all around him, to surprisingly little effect. --Marshall Fine

Customer Reviews

One of my all time favorite Comedies
Robin Williams is masterful as a zany survival nut who is being taken advantage of by a scheming businessman preying on fear that society will break down...Walter Matthau is the perfect straight man/foil for Williams...

Even though this is an older movie it is a theme which is still timeless...Is society getting ready for the "Big Flush" and how do responsible people respond to it?...

Williams and Matthau provide one very funny solution.

It shouldn't work, but it does . . .
The comic premise of this movie is a good one. Two passing acquaintances are thrown together trying to escape a hit-man with bad nerves and colitis---well-played by Jerry Reed. I think Williams does carry the movie, but his repartee with Reed is some of the funniest writing (more likely improvisation) I've ever heard. Whatever this movie lacks is made up for in the scenes pitting Williams' "Donald" against Reed's bad guy. Those scenes are worth the cost of the whole movie. I'm amazed and also happy this one was released on DVD.

FUNNY
This is one that is easily forgotten, but people should rediscover this piece of work. 2 men's lives unexpectedly cross when a diner is robbed. Donald(Williams) Quinelle decides that society is too sick to "survive" and joins a survivalist group in the mountains. Sonny(Matthau) Paluso wants no part of the survivalist mode of living, but in order to save his own life from the armed robber they can both put the finger on he soons joins Quinelle in the survivalist camp. Jerry Reed is the robber and does one heck of a job here. Opening credits use the late Governor Huey Long's "Every Man a King".