Greetings
Director: Brian De Palma
Year Released: 1968
Rating: 2.0
Three buddies living in NYC during the Vietnam War era, Jon (Robert De Niro), Lloyd (Gerrit Graham) and Paul (Jonathan Warden), discuss the best way to dodge the draft and then the movie breaks up into vignettes: Jon's a committed peeping tom, Lloyd is a conspiracy theorist who's particularly fascinated with the JFK assassination and Paul tries out "computer dating" with mixed results. While it is noteworthy (I suppose) as a "time capsule," capturing an intense moment in American history, the absence of a plot and its deconstructed nature makes it seem like a French New Wave knock-off, except several of the bits go on too long with minimal payoff and it still has the trappings of a proto-student film. However, there are some truly funny scenes, like when Lloyd uses a naked woman to "analyze" the trajectory of Oswald's bullets and the closing sequence, where Jon is in a combat zone with a reporter and reverts to his "old ways." Naughty habits are hard to kick....