Hal Ashby's deceptively sunny direction of Robert Towne and Warren Beatty's sex-comedy screenplay is brimful of Barbie hair, open shirts and Triumph motorcycles, as libidinous pompadour George (Beatty) juggles four Beverly Hills sirens with his own nascent career plans. Yet the oppressive setting (Nixon's '68 election night), Beatty's stunningly lugubrious performance and his eventual comeuppance all feed a brash vein of cynicism that shapes the entire movie.
Watching the ripples set in motion through the suburbs of Sidney by the murder of therapist Barbara Hershey, Ray Lawrence's movie is the most unfashionably mature murder mystery of the past decade. There may be something too neat about how everything fits together, but it's a film that understands life at its messiest. As the cop brooding at the centre, Anthony LaPaglia gives the performance of his career.
This includes much of the surviving live footage of Clapton, Bruce and Baker, including extracts from Cream's farewell Royal Albert Hall performance. All three band members are interviewed, and the inclusion of Hendrix's cover of "Sunshine Of Your Love" on Lulu's TV show is a bonus. But while Cream's own songs have stood the test of time well, the extended blues jams sound tedious today.
