Pocket Money

Third of the Rosenberg/Newman collaborations, and a wry, leisurely relief after the heavyweight experiences of Cool Hand Luke and WUSA. The lazily incongruous character studies of naive Newman, hard-drinking, slow-witted Marvin, and a strong support cast, come from a script by Terrence Malick, revving up on this and the equally off-the-wall Gravy Train for his own Badlands; while the barest bones of plot (the ill-suited pair stumble through Mexico on a crooked cattle-dealing assignment) are down to the source novel, JPS Brown's Jim Kane.