Prime Cut
Organized crime movie villains are generally involved in the usual vices: narcotics, gambling, weapons, bootlegging. But up until the recent release of The Sound Of Freedom, very few if any Hollywood films would feature full on antagonists who would engage in the horrific practice of child sex trafficking, a very real life criminal activity which the film industry somehow felt was a little bit too taboo in dramatizing onscreen. This 1972 release is significant not only for tackling this subject matter (moreso given the year it came out) in what was in many ways still a toned down depiction, it also brought together two Hollywood legends in a one time face off between their own personal representations of good and evil. On one side you had Lee Marvin, the tough as nails movie badass who had started off portraying villains before moving on to greener pastures usually consisting of him playing more of an antihero archetype rather than actual true blue good guys. On the other end, we get Gene Hackman (less than a year removed from his Best Actor Oscar win for French Connection) playing one of the outright nastiest roles of his career as the jovial child sex trafficker and entrepreneur in the meat industry. In many ways, the film plays as being a no frills gangster flick with a central conflict set up in the opening scene, in this case a Chicago area crime boss (Eddie Egan) hiring Marvin on an independent contractor basis to serve as an enforcer and collections man for “The Pigsfeet Brothers” consisting of Hackman and his Neanderthal hillbilly sibling (Gregory Walcott, best remembered as the heroic lead in Ed Wood’s Plan 9 From Outer Space), a guy who could afford to live in the lap of luxury but instead CHOOSES to live in a shithole flophouse like a filthy pig while his older brother Hackman serves as the brains of the organization and lives on a fancy yacht. The beef is that Hackman owes the Chicago mob $500,000 over what seemed to be startup money for his own crime operations out of Kansas City. And he’s not playing nice: several rank and file henchmen who have already gone to see Hackman have turned up dead and / or processed into human sausages (presumably over Hackman’s refusal to pay up) and so now Marvin (a “specialist” in this field) being sent in is a sign that things have become deadly serious. And rightfully so, since it turns out that all the dead messengers were killed because they had learned that Hackman’s real business interests besides livestock and the meat industry (with him being a classic “meatman” who believes that every last bit of a slaughtered animal should be put to some kind of practical use) involves him taking underage female children (fetched out of a partnership with an orphanage where extensive grooming of the girls has already taken place), doping them up and keeping them naked in pens as if they were any other animals where they are put out for auction to a legion of rich pedophiles. Obviously, it is implied that the mobsters in Chicago (with their more “conventional” forms of crime) would not tolerate such an operation taking place if they had such knowledge and certainly Marvin appears completely disgusted by what he sees, nonetheless telling Hackman that he just wants the money owed and nothing more, but not before he decides to rescue one particular girl (Sissy Spacek) who looks especially lost and frightened all while telling Hackman to consider this an “advance” as he buys himself some time in convincing Hackman that he just might be into little girls after all. Instead, he buys Spacek some clothes and fancy dinners, but otherwise makes no advancement sexually towards her at all (a contrast from the initial wishes of director Michael Ritchie who had suggested to Marvin having a physical romance between the two, an idea which Marvin was rightfully revolted by). Things come to a head at the local county fair (which appears to be the largest Caucasian gathering ever seen with not a single non white person to be found) when Hackman unleashes his own personal army (consisting mostly of white, blonde haired pretty boys some of whom are even wearing overalls) on Marvin and his people, leading to an extended chase through the wheat fields where even a thresher gets involved (complete with a fat hillbilly at the controls who gleefully licks his lips when Spacek trips and falls). Some of the contrasts on display here are pretty stark, such as the “regular” townspeople and meat company employees who know what’s going on and what Hackman is up to, but still look the other way because of the prosperity which he brings to their community, while others such as the animalistic brother played by Wolcott completely revel in the idea that one can simply walk into the holding pen area, pick out a piece of soft merchandise for themselves and proceed to live out all of their sick sexual fantasies on an innocent young girl. Which leads to the beacon of the film’s everlasting greatness where we have Marvin (essentially a glorified mob enforcer and little more) deciding on his own to singlehandedly rescue ALL of the children being held under Hackman’s tyrannical grip, adopting Spacek as a daughter rather than a lover and naturally dispensing some of God’s justice to the degenerate Hackman and his even more bestial brother and in doing so proving himself to have a strong moral fiber which you might not expect given his line of work. The countryside location work is a thing of beauty here and the opening sequence (a graphic and realistic display of preparing the product at a meat processing plant) should carry a warning label that it might just make you a professional vegetarian. As for Hackman, despite this being the scummiest role of his legendary career (and it’s not even close), he still brings an effectively twisted good cheer to the performance, blithely considering his interest in “girl flesh” to be no different than selling “cow flesh” as if it were just another extension of being part of the meat and livestock industry, but the danger that still exists if you cross him is prevalent at all times as Hackman does a fantastic job of playing a most unsavory villain who gets taken down by one of the greatest movie tough guys of all time…
9/10