The Paper Chase

A muddled and slick 'youth' film. Worth seeing because it says a lot more than the makers intended about how hustlers like John Mitchell and Ehrlichman were turned out by the 'best' law school. Bottoms plays a small-town Minnesota kid who wants to make it into the upper echelon via Harvard Law School. Excellent sequences of his quarrelsome study group tearing one another apart under fierce competitive strain - and a fine performance by Houseman as their olympian, sadistic professor - make the film watchable. Writer-director Bridges seems totally unaware that his ambitious young hero, not the professor, is the villain.