Mjeteconer Just perfect...

Beystiman It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

Derry Herrera Not sure how, but this is easily one of the best movies all summer. Multiple levels of funny, never takes itself seriously, super colorful, and creative.

Matylda Swan It is a whirlwind of delight --- attractive actors, stunning couture, spectacular sets and outrageous parties.

PeterMitchell-506-564364 I've seen this movie only a few times, 4-5 throughout, I'd say. I loved how Matthau played serious in this. It's probably the only unfunny Matthau film I've seen, and this is definitely no comedy. This 70's film, with it's hard feel and vibe, is uniquely intriguing. Some nutter boards a bus, shoots down 8 people, one a police detective friend of cop, Matthau's. At the start this then alive detective was tailing some old guy, as I can remember, where obviously this has a bearing on his demise, otherwise the scene wouldn't be included in the film. What I loved, in this film, where about every exterior shot was shot in sunny weather, was the pairing of Matthau, and his new partner Dern, where he proves looks aren't everything, if you can act. Dern, playing tough here, who tends to infer violence if his suspects don't co-operate almost stole the show. One scene, has him getting into a confrontational scene with other cop, Lou Gossett Jnr, and he ever so smoothly backs down, provided a cool moment. We take the journey with Dern (who almost shared Matthau's dead partner's build, though the dead guy was better looking) and the gum chewing Matthau to find the cause of this slaughter. When questioning a pimp, as Matthau leaves, we hear a ho mumble "Pig". Matthau stops, looks around with angry intent. There's a couple of these unnerving moments from this actor's character, and it's not just in his work, though Dern came off better acting wise in this good solid crime flick, that will having you guessing why, where it's answer, will kind of thrown you into a one eighty, where you the viewer, have been really duped. We learn things about the dead cop, like how he was a bit of a creep, into things, other cops didn't know about, where some realizations start to surface. That's what makes a good crime thriller, though it doesn't have the logical of motives for the slaughter. Near it's end, if losing more faith as we do through the film to finding the killer and his reasons, our two hot shots resort to setting up this suspected killer in the same scenario as in the start. Another exhausting scene has Matthau and Dern climbing flights of steps to interrogate someone, where they stop mid flight to take a breather. Paul Koslo, again plays another loser character, who provides some info, who when questioned, has a tendency to smile all the time, and is not big on straight talk.

birck On the strength of Walter Matthau's ability with a character, the strong cast list, and the original Swedish crime novel-which was excellent-I watched the whole thing, unfortunately. As someone else on this forum noted, it works well for about the first 15-20 minutes, then decays into pointlessness. The main character's partner, played by Bruce Dern, is brought up short repeatedly when he makes wrong moves with witnesses, or says the wrong thing, so often that I expected an explosion. Which never came, and that thread finally went nowhere. A meeting with a group of Hell's Angels went nowhere, at least for the story. I could handle the dated costumes and social norms, but after an hour or so, it seemed as if that's all the film had to offer-a tour of SF's colorful corners in the Haight-Ashbury era, with a tacked-on murder mystery that came to no satisfying conclusion. It isn't necessary for every film-made-from-a-novel to stick exactly to the original, word-for-word, but the only good part of this film was that first 15-20 minutes, which is transported fairly closely from Stockholm, where the original was set, to San Francisco. Once the bus has crashed, and the dead passengers have been identified, It goes rolling straight down Potrero Hill and into the Bay.

MrSubway1 Yes this is a slow moving police investigation. After the initial massacre on a SF city bus, that does a great job of pulling the audience in, the action slows considerably.The initial crime scene investigation is both authentic and pathetic. It is a glaring example of poor techniques that were employed by all police departments as recently as the 1980's. In this movie all the detectives were traipsing through the crime scene, smoking cigarettes and touching everything in sight.Though the autopsy scene is long and the actors playing the corpses couldn't quite stay still, the actual autopsy was painfully authentic. Also authentic was the medical care given to the only living bus passenger. This was way before ET and ER and dare I say probably influenced both.The characters and the themes the detectives deal with mirror the change and turmoil that defined the 1970's. The seedy city that has been romanticized recently is well represented in this film: promiscuous gays, pimps and prostitutes, kinky sex all out in the public.Those things are the real strengths of the film. The murderer himself is a let down as is investigation that leads to him. A rich man kills a detective to prevent that detective from fingering him as the murderer of the rich man's wife. He kills everybody on the bus as cover. Oh please. If he is that ruthless and smart to do that, than he is not going to hold onto the gun, or get spooked by some detective who shows up with an old photo. The climactic scene on the bus, when the killer gets shot while trying to wipe out another detective on another city bus is so contrived as to be laughable (perhaps how they came up with the tile).Overall, enjoyable as a period piece and character study.

moonspinner55 Walter Matthau looks mighty dour throughout this grim, convoluted, exasperating crime-file nonsense. A public bus massacre in San Francisco, which included a cop among its victims, is investigated by the force, and Matthau is saddled with new partner Bruce Dern (he hates him on sight, how's that for originality?). The details of the case make little sense and, although the dead-ends these cops follow might reflect real-life police business, they don't do much for a plot already messy with loose ends and too many characters (all of them sordid). This picture looks as bad as it plays, with muddy cinematography and pasty-faced actors. The ignorant plot is jammed with clichés, while Thomas Rickman's screenplay, adapted from a Swedish novel by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlööthe, never offers up a sardonic side to the madness. It's just violent TV made more violent for the movies. *1/2 from ****