Cisco Pike

Bill L. Norton's 1972 film follows a musician in Los Angeles whose career is over. Cisco used to write songs and sell drugs; after two arrests he stopped, and the record companies are not interested in him either. A corrupt policeman corners him: he will sell a hundred kilos of confiscated marijuana over one weekend or go back to prison. The film builds that round of selling like a road story, with Cisco visiting his old customers, his friends and the life he left one by one. The account uses the dispersal of late-sixties culture as background and rescues nobody. Kris Kristofferson is in his first lead and wrote the songs. Gene Hackman plays the corrupt cop. Who it's for: viewers who like American independent cinema of the seventies. Who it's not for: anyone expecting plot; the film is built on wandering.