Bad Company | |
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Directed by | Robert Benton |
Written by | Robert Benton David Newman |
Produced by | Stanley R. Jaffe |
Starring | Barry Brown Jeff Bridges |
Cinematography | Gordon Willis |
Edited by | Ron Kalish Ralph Rosenblum |
Music by | Harvey Schmidt |
Distributed by | Paramount Pictures |
Release date |
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Running time | 93 minutes |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Bad Company is a 1972 American Western film directed by Robert Benton, who also co-wrote the film with David Newman. It stars Barry Brown and Jeff Bridges as 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.[1]
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.