Quartile rating: 8/10 · 1 rating
High school seniors and best friends, Sonny and Duane, live in a dying Texas town. The handsome Duane is dating a local beauty, while Sonny is having an affair with the coach's wife. As graduation nears and both boys contemplate their futures, Duane eyes the army and Sonny takes over a local business. Each struggles to figure out if he can escape this dead-end town and build a better life somewhere else.
Bogdanovich's elegiac portrait of a dying Texas town in the early 1950s is a genuine landmark of New Hollywood. The black-and-white cinematography by Robert Surtees is stunning — evoking the bleakness and desolation of the Panhandle with extraordinary precision. The ensemble acting is exceptional across the board: Cloris Leachman and Ben Johnson both won Oscars, and the younger cast (Bridges, Bottoms, Shepherd) is equally impressive. The plot, adapted from Larry McMurtry's novel, is observational rather than propulsive — a mosaic of aimless lives — which is effective but not especially constructed. The novelty is real but not overwhelming; the coming-of-age-in-a-dying-town template had precedents, and while the execution is distinctive, it works within a recognizable dramatic mode. The ending is quietly devastating but follows the film's low-key register throughout rather than delivering a singular emotional coup.