I’ve posted elsewhere about lousy films that were promoted with great posters. This is the other way around – great film, really awful (IMHO) poster!

This is the UK quad original release poster. I’m not a huge fan of photographic posters in any case, but what really bugs me about this poster is that the designers could not be content to just focus on the powerful main image of de Niro and the rifle but had to squeeze this by including multiple stills from the film. It seems just plain lazy to me, and the finished effect is a bit of a dog’s dinner. It does rather have the feel that the distributors felt they needed to explain the complexities of the film in order to sell it to a UK audience – see folks, its a war film, its a romance too, its not really all about hunting…!

This poster has damage at the corners, I think I must have picked it up for free or next to free, simply because I liked the film, otherwise I am not really sure how it came to be in my possession.

Random fact: back in 1986 I saw Robert de Niro in a play on Broadway (as far as I know the only play he appeared in since becoming a movie star). It was called Cuba and his Teddy Bear, and it also co-starred Ralph Macchio of Karate Kid fame, in his stage debut. It was a so-so play (about a drug dealer and his son), but de Niro as (almost) always gave a great performance. There is definitely a special buzz I think about seeing movie stars acting ‘in the flesh’, even though in this instance it was from the distance of a matinee cheap seat up ‘in the gods’!