On the strength of Walter Matthau's ability with a character, the strong cast list, and the original Swedish crime novel-which was excellent-I watched the whole thing, unfortunately. As someone else on this forum noted, it works well for about the first 15-20 minutes, then decays into pointlessness. The main character's partner, played by Bruce Dern, is brought up short repeatedly when he makes wrong moves with witnesses, or says the wrong thing, so often that I expected an explosion. Which never came, and that thread finally went nowhere. A meeting with a group of Hell's Angels went nowhere, at least for the story. I could handle the dated costumes and social norms, but after an hour or so, it seemed as if that's all the film had to offer-a tour of SF's colorful corners in the Haight-Ashbury era, with a tacked-on murder mystery that came to no satisfying conclusion. It isn't necessary for every film-made-from-a-novel to stick exactly to the original, word-for-word, but the only good part of this film was that first 15-20 minutes, which is transported fairly closely from Stockholm, where the original was set, to San Francisco. Once the bus has crashed, and the dead passengers have been identified, It goes rolling straight down Potrero Hill and into the Bay.

I just got back from San Francisco and decided to watch this again. To my surprise, I liked it much more the second time.Make no mistake, this is not a great flick, but it is an interesting one. There are a ton of false leads in the beginning of the movie and we don't even get to the meat of the plot - the killer, for instance - until way into the running time. If you like logical and linear plots, this one will disappoint.But there a couple of very good points. First, the ensemble cast is great. The range of characters keeps things interesting. Lou Gossett, Jr. gets a very meaty part before disappearing. Joanna Cassidy is also good in a brief role.The highlight of the film is the relationship between Walter Matthau and Bruce Dern. Dern gets to play an early non-psycho but he is a total jerk. Yet by the end of the film you wind up liking him. Matthau is worse - he never smiles and is totally cut off from his fellow officers and his family. He can't even confront his teenage son. Watching these two make an uneasy truce and develop a relationship is what the movie really is about.The bad news is that, except for the opening sequence, the action scenes are flat - not terrible, just flat. There are a lot of loose ends floating through the plot and characters disappear at random.Perhaps most interesting is the parallel between this film's style and the Italian Giallo genre going on a the same time. The black gloved killer, the grim detective, even the plot holes would be right at place in an Argento movie from 1973, not a Hollywood film.Worth two looks.

A portrait of swinging San Francisco in the 1970's with a gloomy and uncomfortable detective investigating a mass murder, this opens well, but by the end has fallen pretty far. Reflecting mainstream America's discomfort at the time, most of Frisco's inhabitants are weird and sleazy, and the detectives by voice and acting show their hatred for the job and society. Matthau has job and family problems, and the family matters are a loose end that is never resolved by the film's end, nor is Dern's relationship with nurse. What's an even greater flaw is that the villain never says a word throughout the film. We hear Matthau rage about him, we see him hanging out in gay bars (to indicate his moral degeneracy), but not a single word of dialog passes his lips. It's like Matthau is swinging at smoke.

I caught this on a movie channel a couple weeks ago and knew that it was supposed to be pretty good, Dern plays the new partner of the cop whose partner is killed, and as the plot reveals it is connected to an old case his old partner was reinvestagating. It has a few good and unexpected twist that was highly enjoyable and a climatic end that was well executed.The very last scene had me cracking up when the cop brings the guy in that looks like the boxer and Walter Matthau tells him that's 'it's a bit too late for that' and walks off.overall 8/10.