(Credits: Far Out / Josh Jensen)
Mon 5 January 2026 20:15, UK
Having been around for so long that he’s worked with some of cinema’s most iconic stars of multiple generations, Robert Duvall is more than entitled to pass judgment on what constitutes a bad movie, even when those bad movies are unquestionable classics that continue to stand the test of time.
As a key component of Francis Ford Coppola’s first two Godfather films and Apocalypse Now, not to mention To Kill a Mockingbird, True Grit, Falling Down, Network, Sling Blade, and many more, the veteran has been in more than a few acclaimed features himself, and he’s still going strong at 95 years old.
From his beginnings opposite Gregory Peck, Steve McQueen, and John Wayne in the 1960s to his 21st-century outings alongside Tom Cruise, Robert Downey Jr, and Michael Caine, via co-starring roles with Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, and Robert Redford, Duvall has spent his entire career rubbing shoulders with the biggest names in the business on both sides of the camera.
However, that doesn’t mean he’s willing to indulge in hagiography for hagiography’s sake, as evidenced by his complete, utter, and total disdain for Stanley Kubrick. Duvall abhorred the way the mercurial auteur treated his actors, and happily lambasted A Clockwork Orange and The Shining for their terrible acting, which is nothing if not a hot take.
Although he was never elevated to permanent leading man status alongside ‘New Hollywood’ contemporaries like Jack Nicholson, Gene Hackman, Dustin Hoffman, and the rest, the actor was nonetheless an integral onscreen part of the transformative era, appearing in several films that heralded the industry’s bold, brave, and radical new direction.
There’s no single movie that can be pinpointed as the exact genesis of the ‘New Hollywood’ era, but Arthur Penn’s Bonnie and Clyde was undoubtedly one of the first. The crime drama was a breath of fresh air and a huge departure from what had been expected of mainstream releases up until that point, and it deserves its flowers as one of the finest and most important flicks of its generation.
And yet, that was nowhere near enough for Duvall to give it a pass. “I saw recently a newly restored version of Bonnie and Clyde,” he informed Screen Anarchy. “It really sucked.” When asked to expand on why he loathed a seminal film so much, he wasn’t really in the mood to elaborate, adding only a secondary, “Sucked!” to reinforce his point.
He did eventually reveal his reasons, and it’d be selling him short to call them scathing. “The acting’s horrible,” he explained. “It’s like a Saturday Night Live sketch. And it’s an insult to the Texas Rangers. You can ask any one of the Rangers in this. I mean, I don’t get… To me, there’s something fraudulent about it.”
Tying a bow around his hatred for Bonnie and Clyde, Duvall suggested that “it doesn’t stand up now, and it didn’t stand up then.” Bumper box office, two Academy Award wins from ten nominations, and an enduring status as a pivotal moment in American cinema history would disagree, but he’s allowed his opinion.
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