If you want honesty and not hype...read my comment

Rating: 6/10 (20 December 2009)

This was in fact a good movie. I always knew it was a "biggie" but had not gotten around to watching it. I actually watched about an hour of it and got bored and quit. A few hours later I was too lazy to put in another DVD so I watched the rest of it and it got much better.
I don't think it deserves to be as highly ranked as it is, but it's fun none the less.
The movie is pure drama with only a sprinkle of comedy and most of the advertising and promotions of the movie have presented it as comedy which is BS. I love a good drama, but I hate run on dialog and the movie had too much of that, but if you stick with it you realize it needs much of it to play out slowly for a character building.
Jacky boy did good, but he was just a center piece for the other great actors to play off of. Everyone else is the star, and thats not an insult towards Jack, its true...his character is what puts the story and heart there for the other characters and allows them to open up.
It's basically a story about a guy who gets put into a crazy house in order to get out of jail time and once there he realizes a lot about himself and about the human mind..how sane are we and is crazy always our fault or are we trapped inside of the worlds madness...I don't know how to say it, but thats why you watch the movie because it gets pretty deep.
Again the acting is great, 35 years later and its still appealing and also its nice to see so many great stars in their early years, looking young and fresh. The direction didn't do much for me here...say what you will.. It was basic direction and the only key thing I enjoyed was letting the actors tell a characters story without dialog at times. The director had a lot of closeups spending quite some time focusing on just human emotions without words...sometimes thats deeper and more poignant than a page of brilliant lines..
6 out of 10 stars because Its not perfect, it had a great story, but not a great hold.