Cisco Pike

Kristofferson gets the title role in his first movie and turns in one of his best performances, as the fading rocker hanging around the LA music scene in the hope of a comeback, but scraping a living as a small time drug dealer. Hackman, on a run of strong pictures at the time, is the conniving cop on his case, who blackmails him into offloading one hundred kilos of marijuana inside three days - or else. Kristofferson conveys the myopic exhilaration of a string of minor scores with the tensile, empty conviction of a man only just holding desperation at bay.