In Ritchie’s visually audacious, but emotionally chilly directorial debut, Robert Redford sheds his golden-boy charm to play an aloof and self-centered competitive skiier. The film is, in many ways, a deconstruction of the uplifting sports genre that Redford would take to new heights 15 years later in The Natural. This film, however, is very much a product of edgy, antihero-centered late-’60s Hollywood desperation. It is also a virtual compendium of European New Wave-borrowed stylistics, which give it an immediately dated quality, but also infuse it at times with raw power. (DVD)