Five Easy Pieces-1970

Director Bob Rafelson

Starring Jack Nicholson

Scott’s Review #101

Reviewed July 10, 2014

Grade: A-

Five Easy Pieces (1970) is Jack Nicholson’s first leading role, and as you watch it now, it is clear that Bobby Dupea influenced many of his later performances.

The film is a quiet character study of a talented yet unhappy concert pianist who gives up his privileged life of affluence and performing to lead a simple, blue-collar life on an oil rig and date a neurotic, lonely waitress, played wonderfully by Karen Black.

He returns, via a road trip, to his upper-class family to visit his ailing father.

With Black in tow, they travel from California to remote Washington, with a couple of excellent scenes involving two angry, at-life female hitchhikers, and a cold waitress at a coffee shop where Nicholson performs his infamous “chicken sandwich” scene.

It is a story of one man’s loneliness and his conflict between the two lives he has lived and his turmoil at deciding where he belongs- a conflict many people wrestle with.

He is not a happy man.

Karen Black is excellent as the needy, clingy girlfriend, and Sally Struthers has a small but interesting role as a flirtatious girl.

The film drags at times, moving very slowly, but it does an excellent job of getting inside one man’s mind and sharing the pain with the audience.

The film is nuanced, as the conflict Dupea feels pulls at his very being, and it conveys this incredibly well. The final scene is simply mesmerizing in its power.

Five Easy Pieces (1970) is a purely character-driven and wonderfully life-questioning film.

Oscar Nominations: Best Picture, Best Actor-Jack Nicholson, Best Supporting Actress-Karen Black, Best Story or Screenplay Based on Factual Material or Material Not Previously Published or Produced

Golden Globe Nominations: 1 win-Best Picture-Drama, Best Director-Bob Rafelson, Best Actor-Drama-Jack Nicholson, Best Supporting Actress- Karen Black (won), Best Screenplay