The Chase

Terror in a Texas town as a prison escapee (Redford), returning home to seek shelter and justice, stirs up a cesspit of hatred, corruption, guilt, lust and racial prejudice. Lillian Hellman's script, based on a novel/play by Horton Foote but emerging as a sort of updated and expanded Little Foxes, sometimes fringes absurdity in trying to indict practically everybody in town as a secret sinner, and in its stagy contrivance (the refugee just happens by on the night of a convention when temperatures are running drunkenly high). But it does manage to weave a credible pattern out of the tangled loyalties and enmities, which Penn's direction takes by the scruff and shakes into a firework display of controlled violence. Terrific performances too, although Brando (undergoing his statutory beating up as the sheriff caught in the middle) rather overdoes the broody bit.