Figures in a Landscape

Depending upon viewers' feelings towards filmmaker Joseph Losey, they'll either consider Figures in a Landscape deeply profound or hopelessly mannered. Based on a novel by Barry England, the film stars Robert Shaw and Malcolm McDowell as two escaped prisoners in an unidentified totalitarian country. MacConnachie (Shaw) and Ansell (McDowell) occasionally pause to exchange profundities but spend most of their time on the run from an omnipresent police helicopter. Along the way, the two men are helped by the people, who obviously are as contemptuous of the powers that be as MacConnachie and Ansell. But it's all for not: the convicts' fate was sealed the moment they broke out. Pamela Brown has the only other role of substance, as an enigmatic widow.