Bad Company

Jeff Bridges leads a group of American Civil War draft dodgers who become outlaws in this entertaining western. As an evocation of the past, it's a remarkably successful venture for first-time director Robert Benton, a Robert Altman protégé who wrote Bonnie and Clyde with David Newman and went on to direct Kramer vs Kramer. Woody Allen's one-time cinematographer Gordon Willis provides the autumnal mood that gives the idea an elegiac resonance and there's accomplished support playing from Barry Brown and David Huddleston.