Bad Company (1972)

Directed by

Robert Benton

Genre

Western film

Country

United States

Runtime

1h 30m

Rated

PG

Rating

6.4 of 10 from 101 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

Two young men dodge the Civil War draft and head west hoping for adventure. They join a gang of other runaways but soon find that life as an outlaw is harsh and ugly.

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What happens

Bad Company is a 1972 American Western film directed by Robert Benton (in his directorial debut), who also co-wrote the film with David Newman. It stars Barry Brown and Jeff Bridges as Jake Rumsey and Drew Dixon, two of a group of young men who flee the draft during the American Civil War to seek their fortune and freedom on the unforgiving American frontier. Later classified by critics as an acid Western, Bad Company attempts in many ways to demythologize the American West in its portrayal of young men forced by circumstance and drawn by romanticized accounts to forge new lives for themselves on the wrong side of the law. Their initial eagerness to be outlaws soon abates, however, when the boys are confronted with the realities of preying on others in a nation ravaged by war and exploitation. The film is often credited with inspiring the name of the classic rock band of the seventies Bad Company which according to Paul Rodgers (the band's lead singer) is incorrect and the name is in fact taken from an illustration in a Victorian book of morals he once perused. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

Trailer

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