Lee Marvin... a war veteran for real, so when Boorman decided to make him an even bigger star than he already was, he knew he was dealing with iconic material that needed to contrast with an equally fiery temper of a quite different kind. So he put another icon from the east opposite him, the king of the Samurai films, and made his first subversive feature. Hey, where else do you get to see Lee Marvin take a leak on Toshiro Mifune's head? Not in any other American cinema of the period, that's for sure!