Slaughterhouse-Five Reviews

George Roy Hill's bold adaptation of Kurt Vonnegut's popular novel focuses on the weird exploits of Billy Pilgrim (played by Sacks), a middle-aged optometrist who bounces back and forth from one stage of his life to another. Intercut are his devastating WW II experiences as a POW in Dresden, where he lives through the Allies' disastrous bombing of the city; his postwar nervous breakdown; his marriage to the obese Gans; the raising of a daughter who grows up just like her mother and a son who goes from hippie to Green Beret; and Sacks's future stay on the planet Tralfamadore, where he and beautiful adult-film star Perrine are closely observed by the Tralfamadorians. Able to survive calamity after calamity by blind luck, Sacks finally is killed by a former comrade in arms, Leibman, who blames him for the death of a friend; then it's back to Tralfamadore. Vonnegut's wildly shifting narrative and provocative theme--that life consists of a continuum of random moments--are given an adept cinematic treatment by Hill, who effectively translates both the serious and the satirical elements of the novel to the screen. Gans, Leibman, and Eugene Roche, as Billy's wartime companion, turn in fine performances, but Perrine and Sacks, making their film debuts, rightfully dominate the proceedings.