Book is fantastic

Yeah, I just read it all in a day actually -- it was that riveting, and what's more, it's exceedingly well-written, no piece of cheap pulp here. The film's one of my favorites - I've seen it at least 4, 5 times - so I couldn't help but picture Bridges and Heard and the rest as I read their dialogue. The actors couldn't have been better cast, especially Bridges, who just fits so snugly into that apathetic character.

The ending to the book, though powerful, I found somewhat dissatisfying. I understand now why it wasn't carried over to the film, why the screenwriter thought it would seem like an Easy Rider ripoff. It is indeed pretty similar to that films end, and while this works in book form in cinema it would seem too derivative I think. So, both endings are fairly ambiguous, or at least fairly open-ended (in the book we never know what really happens to Cutter, he's just left there)... but I find the ambiguity of the film a little more powerful, a little more haunting. "What if it were?" Chilling. Additionally, I like how the film, although very of-a-piece with cynical classics like Chinatown, The Parallax View, and so on, nevertheless doesn't end with the then-requisite unhappy ending, where the protagonist(s) are defeated by the wrath of the capitalist enemy or whatever. The film is unique in that regard, in that it ends with a bit of hope if anything.

I did like the way J.J. Cord/Wolfe was portrayed in the book, as more of an unsuspecting, folksy "aw shucks" kinda guy rather than the capital-V Villain parading his wealth and viciousness in public that you see in the film. Although, in the end, the book confirms J.J.'s viciousness, while the film keeps this thoroughly ambiguous.