Search Movie Review Archives

Before Martin Ritt tackled the romantic comedy “Murphy’s Romance”, he collaborated on a less successful comedy with actress Sally Field. Field plays a hooker with a heart of gold named Amy who falls in with retired prizefighter Elmore Platt after a run in with the law. Although she initially wanting nothing to do with Elmore who has drifted from town-to-town without a fixed address or job in some time, she eventually falls for the rough around the edges Elmore when the two hit the road together. ***

Director Martin Ritt wasn’t very active during the 80’s directing only four features and although “Back Roads” is a bit too formulaic and predictable to make it as memorable as his best films, the two lead performers are absolutely charming in their roles. Some folks might have a hard time with Field in the role of Amy but keep in mind that Field finally broke through as an actress when she played “Sybil” a woman with multiple personalities in the 70’s. Both Jones and Field do a good job with material that’s a bit slim. ---

Paramount has issued this minor Martin Ritt film without any sort of extras. For fans of the film (all 5 of you), that’s too bad. There’s bound to be vintage interviews from the time that Paramount could have dug out of the vault and dusted off. Ritt died less than a decade after this was released in 1981. A retrospective of this prolific filmmaker would have been interesting. Writer Gary DeVore is best known for mysteriously disappearing after working on a script with actress Marsha Mason bak in 1997. DeVore evidently fell asleep at the wheel of his car while driving up highway 5 from Southern California and veered off the road into California’s massive aqua duct that feeds water to the center valley. His body wasn’t found until a year after his disappearance and, although foul play was suspected at the time, a amateur sleuth using DeVore’s credit cards tracked his drive and suggested to the CHP that he may have driven off the road into the aqua duct. The CHP didn’t investigate for some time until they found pieces that could be identified as belonging to DeVore’s car. Why do I go into all of this? Because DeVore wrote very few films in his short career and his brief career and tragic death would have made an interesting extra on this set.