The first and also maybe the main reason for seeing this action drama is that it offers a full—scale ( or almost) Harris role. Martin's Day (1984) is an average melodrama; its main fault is the script. The script is slapdash. Harris' part is very fine—funny, almost lighthearted. His role is somehow more ambitious than the movie. Harris' character turns from a sinister sociopath and a dangerous jailbird into a prankster and a sly-boots. The idea was to offer a Harris recital, and this it does, in spite of the slapdash and incoherent script. As I said, the worst thing about Martin's Day (1984) is its script; the best, its actors (mainly Harris and Mrs. Karen Black) and some landscapes (though the director is no Charles Laughton ,who made such a masterful use of the landscape in his unique movie--The Night of the Hunter).

Anyway, Harris' role is certainly first—class, one of the good things in his career. The point is his immense charm and his original personality and way of behaving.

The director's aptitudes are modest at best, and as a result the movie is only averagely interesting—with such an actor and an idea, it could of been much better. The kid—the little Martin—is not much likable. Harris compensates for all these, as he gives here one of his roles in a style of a keen intelligence and striking quality that sometimes reminds of Mitchum's style of acting.

There is a certain –at least decent—sense of the nature and the landscape and of integrating the characters' moves into the landscape and into the physical beauty.

A kid and a rogue?This makes one think about things like The Night of the Hunter (1955),Waterworld (1995) (remember Dennis Hopper!),A Perfect World (1993) ....

The idea and the point of this film are better than the script itself, which is not very good. In other words, the literary execution is less good than the core, than the idea.

Harris' character remains very enigmatic to the end. I don't know if this was the director's intention. There are facts that should of been explained (e.g., Harris' panic on the train, his sudden change of disposition, etc.). It's like the script was chopped. The movie's end is plainly stupid.

The film needed a contemplative, dreamy, poetic and touching atmosphere. Or,in other words, it needed a director and a script. The intentions were obviously good; the product isn't. But most reviewers are completely uninterested in aesthetic achievements; for them, the intentions and the slogans suffice. In cinema—in art—it's not about liking the idea or what could of been, but about liking –or not—the results, the achievement, the product. It's not about promising, but about offering.

Karen Black has a nice bit part. I wish we could see more of her legs.