text: If you want to see a movie about two utterly unsympathetic characters, this is the one. The acting is superb, both from John Cassavetes as the insane paranoid whom, as the saying goes, they REALLY ARE out to get, and from Peter Falk as his lifelong best friend to whom he turns for rescue. Big mistake, but since they're both amoral mobsters, and misogynistic bastards to boot, it's hard to decide whom to root for LESS. Only writer/director Elaine May could have gotten away with this one. I thought it interesting that in a lengthy interview with producer Michael Hausman included on the DVD, he disclosed that the two stars had "very different ideas" about the script, that the director was nearly impossible to work with, that the director of photography had impossible demands made of him, that the crew was constantly angry about being made to sit around waiting, and so on. This mood of one big VERY dysfunctional family comes across clearly on the screen.