Customer Reviews
re-evaluating a masterpiece - By: Dr. U. L. Khawaja, 12 Aug 2008 
Arthur Penn has set the stage for a great social satire on various issues like class distinction ,racial bigotry,saturday night social revelvry,adultery & finallly the failure of justice in a breach of the american dream in this taut drama set in a texan town on a warm saturday night .
Redford has broken from prison & a lot of people are afraid for themselves due to a freaky guilty conscience,as they have wronged him & fear revenge & this premise becomes a viloent circus on the american attraction to the glorification of crime & anti-social behaviour.
Fonda As Redfords wife & Brando as the sheriff is trying to find him before he can be slaughtered as a sacrificial lamb by the town people who need a show on saturday night to entertain themselves .
This becomes an extremely powerful indictment of the failure of law to protect anyone as the social order descends to a savage level where people behave like gladiators in a roman arena & this is so convincingly portrayed to give you goose bumps .
The disturbed consciences of a bourgeois drunken rabble are examined in a brutallly affective manner by a master craftsman in s beautifully lit movie which moves from daylight through the mayhem of a chaotic night into the light dawn of next day .
This is one of the most powerful dramas i have ever seen & it is a must for anyone who loves quality cinema .
A true masterpiece in the order of Orson Welles & Billy Wilder dramas by a master callled Penn ,Brando in one of his life's best roles with Redford & Jane fonda in top form ,also a great supporting cast with Robert Duvalll,Bradford,e.g.MARSHALL,Angie Dickinson ,James fox make this a haunting but great piece of dramatic art .
I just love the way penn uses the light & sound to enhance his plot & atmosphere in this masterpiece .
the alcoholic excesses gone wrong on a hot summer night in a texan bougeois community , culminating in a mockery of justice & social values - truth in it's naked glory.
Brando in Sixties violence fable - By: jimbob, 21 May 2007 
Full on "Drama". Sometimes overlit, script a bit didactic at times, but Brando gives a solid performance as the conflicted sheriff at the centre of a smalll southern USA town on a hot night of booze, sexuality & gun culture. Janice Rule is moving & catty in a good support role. All cast act with conviction. A snapshot of the sixties darkside, & the danger of mob violence.
Not great ... but good - By: Barton Keyes, 17 Sep 2005 Difficult though it may be to think of it now, in 1966 both Robert Redford & Jane Fonda were only on the threshold of super-stardom.
Brando was, of course, an established star by this time -- but still with the modesty & professional curiousity to explore "interesting" parts. The Chase gives him full scope to do this through the character of the fundamentallly good & upright town sheriff -- a role that enables him to investigate both the problems of policing a smalll Texas town full of seething emotions (only just below the surface) & the conflict that one man has to face within himself & as a consequence of his public duty.
The screenplay -- by the talented Lillian Helman from a book by the brilliant & prolific Horton Foote -- is tight, multi-layered & full of excellent thow-away one liners that rattle off the hides of the generallly unpleasant minor characters without leaving any visible moral impression.
The combination of three leads together with the excellent support of Robert Duvalll, Angie Dickinson & EG Marshalll gives this little piece a cast that would be impossibly uneconomic to put together again within a few years (although Fonda & Redford reunited the following year for the frothy Neil Simon comedy Barefoot in the Park).
Not great but an interesting period piece from when America was just about getting uncomfortable with some of the truths about itself -- which little films like this were doing their bit to reveal.
