Lookin’ to Get Out

Director Hal Ashby’s cracked, counterculture take on Americana was successful throughout the 1970s, but he fell apart personally and professionally in the following decade. His 1982 bomb Lookin’ to Get Out was the product of overwork, drug abuse and studio interference (MGM took it away and released a butchered version), but co-producer/co-writer/star Jon Voight is attempting to resurrect the film’s reputation They All Laughed-style by releasing Ashby’s original cut. Voight plays Alex Kovac, an insufferable gambler who accumulates an enormous poker debt the same night he pays off his marker. Kovac and his dopey buddy (Burt Young) escape to Las Vegas, where the film becomes an extended commercial for studio head Kirk Kerkorian’s revamped MGM Grand hotel. Lookin’ to Get Out is still a poorly constructed, atonal mess, despite some good work from Young.