Paperback Hero

Not at all a bad film, Pearson's portrait of a small-town Midnight Cowboy is precise and convincing. The background of the wheat and cattle town in Saskatchewan is drawn with a conscientiousness that gives the film a rare three-dimensionality; and Dillon (Dullea) is a persuasive hero/victim, a totally unsympathetic character who has swallowed the Big Country myth whole, and is increasingly puzzled to find the world around him oddly out of phase with his 'Marshal Dillon' self-image. Pearson has expertly judged the distance between Dillon in his circumscribed world and the townsfolk in their not unattractive one, never falling into the trap of caricature; his faults are a tendency towards over-explicitness, plus a certain lack of emotional directness and vitality. Visually, the film is almost too seductive, but Elizabeth Ashley is excellent as the ever-waiting girlfriend, and all the smaller parts are uniformly well filled.