Keith Carradine Movies

A Gunfight was the first mainstream American film to be produced by an Indian tribe -- specifically, the Jicarilla Apaches of New Mexico. Kirk Douglas and Johnny Cash star as Will and Abe, two long-in-tooth gunfighters with nary a dime between them. Although Will and Abe are fast friends, they agree to a winner-take-all showdown, selling tickets to the momentous event. The townspeople are certain that Will is going to win the shootout, but he knows that it would be a fatal mistake to underestimate Abe. Standing on the sidelines is Will's wife Nora (Jane Alexander), who seems curiously disinterested in the outcome, even though she may become a widow before the day is over. Despite the financial input of the Jicarilla tribe, A Gunfight has nothing to do with Indians; perhaps the tribe just wanted to put together a good, old-fashioned western, sans any social commentary. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Memorably described by Pauline Kael as "a beautiful pipe dream of a movie," Robert Altman's McCabe & Mrs. Miller reimagines the American West as a muddy frontier filled with hustlers, opportunists, and corporate sharks -- a turn-of-the-century model for a 1971 America mired in violence and lies. John McCabe (Warren Beatty) wanders into the turn-of-the-century wilderness village known as Presbyterian Church, with vague plans of parlaying his gambling winnings into establishing a fancy casino-brothel-bathhouse. McCabe's business partner is prostitute Mrs. Miller (Julie Christie), who despite her apparent distaste for McCabe helps him achieve his goal. Once McCabe and Mrs. Miller become successful, the town grows and prospers, incurring the jealousy of a local mining company that wants to buy McCabe out. Filmed on location in Canada, McCabe & Mrs. Miller makes use of such Altman "stock company" performers as Shelley Duvall, René Auberjonois, John Schuck, and Keith Carradine. The seemingly improvised screenplay was based on a novel by Edmund Naughton and the movie features a soundtrack of songs by Leonard Cohen. McCabe & Mrs. Miller joined such other Altman efforts as M*A*S*H, The Long Goodbye, and Thieves Like Us in radically revising familiar movie genres for the disillusioned Vietnam era. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this bizarre biker movie, set in 1919, a wandering group of bikers encounter two weird sisters from Nebraska. The siblings are hereditary witches, taught by their father. One of them uses her powers to kill many of the gang members. She spares the one she is attracted to. He begins staying on her farm while her sister and another biker take off to California. On video, it is also known as The Shrieking. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Peter Fonda's sophomore directorial effort recounts the adventures of a group of teens who time-travel to the year 2044. ~ Jason Ankeny, All Movie Guide

Released in the same 12-month span as Terrence Malick's Badlands (1973) and Steven Spielberg's The Sugarland Express (1974), Robert Altman's Thieves Like Us (1974) also tells a story of doomed outlaws in love. Depression-era criminals T-Dub (Bert Remsen), Chicamaw (John Schuck), and Bowie (Keith Carradine) band together to rob banks after escaping from a prison farm. Hiding out with Dee Mobley (Tom Skerritt) and Keechie (Shelley Duvall), and then with T-Dub's in-law Mattie (Louise Fletcher) between bank jobs, the three crooks are a loyal group, but increasingly sensational news accounts of their bloodless robberies force them to split up before their next crime. After a car accident, Chicamaw leaves the injured Bowie in Keechie's care. Love blossoms between the two naïfs, compelling Bowie to find a way to balance his bond to Keechie with his loyalty to his friends and the need for money to head for Mexico. With the law closing in, Bowie and Keechie learn the hard way about the finite honor among thieves, and the need to survive. Adapted from the same Edward Anderson novel as Nicholas Ray's They Live By Night (1949), Altman, writers Calder Willingham and Joan Tewkesbury, and Altman's acting "regulars" reworked not just the classical crime movie but also the 1967 hit Bonnie and Clyde, presenting a resolutely unglamorous portrait of this Coke-swilling outlaw couple and the survivors' stoic drive to carry on. With the radio providing soundtrack and commentary, and the newspapers sending a veiled warning, Bowie and Keechie cannot escape the outside world, but they also cannot transcend it into the realm of myth. Rather than turning the crimes into stylish exploits, Altman's camera remains outside most of the robberies, observing the banal action on the street; he saves the slow-motion in the climactic shoot-out for the witnesses rather than the dead. His zoom shots hover between fragments of emotion and place, while they maintain their observational distance. Unfortunately for Altman (and Malick and Spielberg), audiences preferred outlaw glamour to genre-bending introspection. Still, with its deceptively laid-back tone, eye for expressive detail, and ear for ironic juxtaposition, Thieves Like Us takes its place in Altman's exceptional body of early 1970s work. ~ Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide

Alan Rudolph's first feature Welcome to L.A. displays his characteristic mood of romantic despair utilizing a La Ronde-like circle of sexual adventures and failed affairs centered around song-writer Carroll Barber (Keith Carradine) which spread out through the city. Barber is an aloof womanizer who cannot commit or love and is used by Rudolph to illustrate the loneliness inherent in big-city life. The film, featuring a haunting score by Richard Baskin, is a bit too ambitious for the beginning director. However, he gets good performances from Sally Kellerman as a lonely real estate agent, Geraldine Chaplin, as a Valley housewife addicted to taxi rides and Lauren Hutton as the mistress of a wealthy man. ~ Linda Rasmussen, All Movie Guide

The Duellists is based on a story by Joseph Conrad, variously titled The Duel and The Point of Honour. Keith Carradine and Harvey Keitel play officers in Napoleon's army -- D'Hubert and Feraud, respectively -- who spend their off-hours challenging each other to bloody duels. This goes on for nearly 16 years, with neither man showing any inclination of calling a truce. The final clash finds the gentlemanly D'Hubert getting the upper hand of the obsessed Feraud -- but that's not quite the end of the story. The Duellists was the debut feature for director Ridley Scott; it won the Cannes Film Festival prize for Best First Film. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

After making a series of acclaimed and controversial films in his native France, director Louis Malle made his American debut with this disturbing but visually beautiful story about Hattie (Susan Sarandon), a prostitute working in New Orleans' Storyville district at the turn of the century. When Hattie becomes pregnant, she opts to keep her baby and gives birth to a daughter named Violet, raising her in the brothel where she continues to work. Twelve years later, Violet (Brooke Shields) is old enough to attract the attentions of the brothel's customers, but emotionally has one foot in the adult world of her surroundings and the other in the naïveté of childhood. With Hattie's consent, Violet's virginity is auctioned off to the customers of the house; but for Violet, the pull between childhood and adulthood becomes most clear -- and most painful -- when she draws the affections of Bellocq (Keith Carradine), a photographer who has been working on a photo series about Storyville prostitutes. Violet's blend of childlike innocence and adult sensuality is profoundly attractive to him, but their relationship quickly becomes problematic, especially when Hattie leaves Violet behind to get married. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Inside jokes about the film industry dominate this slight tale of ambition and romance at the Cannes Film Festival. Keith Carradine plays a first-time director who has sunk two years and all his money into a movie about the execution of murderer Gary Gilmore. With his last bit of cash, he flies himself and his picture to Cannes, but the film is seized by French customs. The wife of an Italian producer (Monica Vitti) helps him retrieve his work, and the two become embroiled in a passionate, yet ultimately ill-fated, affair. Carradine gets the first-time, self-important director mostly right, but the movie is so specific to the film industry that viewers may lose interest. ~ Don Kaye, All Movie Guide

The 2-part TV movie Rumor of War was based on the 1977 memoirs of Vietnam veteran Philip Caputo. Brad Davis stars as Caputo, who during the mid-1960s was a Marine lieutenant. In battle after battle, Caputo performs his duties admirably, even when questioning the wisdom of America's Vietnam involvement. As both the war and the body count escalate, Caputo suffers a nervous breakdown. A Rumor of War bears an inevitable resemblance to the much-earlier antiwar epic All Quiet on the Western Front, right down to the presence of a father-figure combat sergeant (Brian Dennehy). Its few cliches aside, the film is a powerful indictment of the brutalization and depersonalization of America's Vietnam forces. A Rumor of War premiered on September 24 and 25, 1980. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

This TV miniseries concerns a Southern village where the murder of a boy has puzzled three different police chiefs since the 1920s. By the time that a black sheriff (Billy Dee Williams) takes over in 1962, he might have just enough evidence to find the culprit. ~ John Bush, All Movie Guide