Scuffling on the Fringes

By * Jay Cocks

"I used to be a teen-age idol," laments the eponymous hero of Cisco Pike. Now, down and out in Venice, Calif., he is trying for a comeback, but the record companies are no longer interested.

Cisco (Kris Kristofferson) kept money in his jeans for a while by dealing dope, but he quit after getting busted twice. His arresting officer (Gene Hackman) visits him one day with a proposition. The cop is in need of money fast. He has got hold of a shipment of high-quality grass and wants Cisco to deal it. Then maybe he will shade his testimony on the two busts to Cisco's advantage. Cisco loads the stash into his guitar case and hits the street.

Too much of the movie is taken up with Cisco's rounds. There are a lot of grungy, evocative Los Angeles locations (diners, the back streets of housing developments), but the action is too episodic to sustain interest. Despite this, and an absurd denouement better suited to the pages of a Marvel comic book, there are indications throughout that Writer-Director Bill L. Norton was up to something more than just another movie about youth and hard knocks.

Norton is especially good at conveying the casual desperation of someone scuffling along the fringes of show biz, biding his time and hoping for a break. Some of his scenes have the unhurried air of good improvisation. Others are burdened by some awfully thick dialogue. At one point, Cisco's girl (Karen Black) demands, "It's me or dealing; make up your mind."

Kristofferson, himself something of a rock star, eases through his first dramatic role in sleepy, sardonic style. Karen Black has played her part, or a slight variation on it, so many times before that even her presence is a cliche. Gene Hackman's psychopathic cop, already on view in The French Connection, is also familiar but a good deal more substantial.

Cisco Pike has the mismatched, haphazard look of a film that was toyed around with in the editing. It is almost as if someone struggled to keep it in a mold that Norton was trying to break.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.