6/10
One of those fabulously cast movies you can't believe that you've never heard of before, SPLIT IMAGE offers an overstuffed amount of cinematic ingredients that director Ted Kotcheff -- coming right out of "First Blood" -- doesn't quite mix properly.
Michael O'Keefe plays Danny, a straight-laced college gymnast who's entranced by a young woman (Karen Allen) from a nearby religious commune. No sooner does Danny go from having dinners with his wealthy, materially-oriented '80s parents (Brian Dennehy, Elizabeth Ashley) than he's cutting his hair and becoming "Joshua," a zonked-out cult member brainwashed by the placid "Neil Kirklander" (Peter Fonda, who looks like he's on another planet for real). Desperate for help, his folks turn to flamboyant bounty hunter Charles Pratt -- played by James Woods in a go-for-broke, over-the-top performance that might've been more fun in another movie and not the otherwise placid, "Afterschool Special"-like picture it's sandwiched in, no thanks to this movie's unfocused script (credited to Scott Spencer, Robert Kaufman and "Karate Kid" scribe Robert Mark Kamen).
Kotcheff's career is filled with solid films and "Split Image"'s story was certainly topical for its time. Yet, while the movie is certainly watchable, it comes off trying to do too much -- bouncing from O'Keefe and Allen's puppy-dog love story wrapped up with cult crazies, to the parents' POV and Woods' "I'm taking this movie over and you ain't getting it back" performance. Woods, who would later partner with Dennehy on the Orion thriller "Best Seller," gives this film such an injection of energy that whenever he's not on-screen, you're aware of the movie's conflicting agendas, which ultimately extends down to a critique of Danny's family's obsession with wealth and materialism. You can virtually tell which scenes were penned by Writer A or B or C, there's just no cohesive line running through this film.
Still, if you're a fan of Woods or Karen Allen (cute coming straight from "Raiders of the Lost Ark"), there's enough here to warrant a look, even with its underwhelming freeze-frame ending and warbly Bill Conti/Will Jennings ballad that finishes up a long-forgotten, but not necessarily forgettable, Fall '82 Polygram Pictures release.