Scarecrow

Max Millan has just been released from prison and hopes to use his savings to open a car wash in Pittsburgh. On the road he meets Francis Lionel Delbuchi, known as Lion, a younger, more easygoing man who has recently come back from a stint at sea and learned he has a child. Though their temperaments differ, the two drifters fall in together and travel across the United States, stopping at bars and at the homes of former lovers and friends, with Max's plans for the car wash and Lion's wish to see his child pulling them onward.

Jerry Schatzberg directed the film from a screenplay by Garry Michael White, with Robert M. Sherman producing. It was Schatzberg's second feature, following The Panic in Needle Park in 1971, and it precedes Street Smart by more than a decade. Gene Hackman plays Max and Al Pacino plays Lion, heading a credited cast of twenty-five that also includes Dorothy Tristan, Ann Wedgeworth, Richard Lynch and Eileen Brennan.

Scarecrow was released in April 1973 and took in about four million dollars worldwide. On IMDb it holds a rating of 7.2 from roughly twenty-two thousand votes, while on TMDB it rates 7 out of 10 from a much smaller base of 361 votes. A critics' rating of 7.8 from thirty-five reviews places it somewhat above the audience scores.