Synopsis
"Following
Jack Nicholson’s breakout supporting turn in
Easy Rider, director
Bob Rafelson devised a powerful leading role for the new star in the searing character study
Five Easy Pieces. Nicholson plays the now iconic cad Bobby Dupea, a shiftless thirtysomething oil rigger and former piano prodigy immune to any sense of responsibility, who returns to his upper-middle-class childhood home, blue-collar girlfriend (
Karen Black) in tow, to see his estranged, ailing father. Moving in its simplicity and gritty in its textures,
Five Easy Pieces is a lasting example of early 1970s American alienation."
– Janus Films
