Boston Globe March 15, 1980

"A SMALL CIRCLE OF FRIENDS" - A film starring Brad Davis, Karen Allen and Jameson Parker, directed by Rob Cohen. Written by Ezra Sacks. At the Pi Alley and suburban Cinemas. Rated R.
This is a nice movie.
Like the nice person, the nice movie shouldn't be undervalued. Being nice isn't easy. It requires a lot of discipline. You have to overlook a lot of things that aren't necessarily nice when you're being nice or trying to be nice. That's both the strength and the weakness of this film - its niceness.
Ironically, one of the nice things about "A Small Circle of Friends" is its willingness to treat a subject that's not necessarily nice. The film is about three college undergraduates who come of age during the Vietnam war. One of the more dramatic moments in the film is a depiction of the rioting at Harvard in l968.
But the film isn't about the war or about student protest against the war or even about Harvard, although it clearly considers its Boston-Cambridg e setting with affection. It's about - to use the term that the 60s has given us - relationships. It's about the relationship of two young men and the young woman they love.
"Circle" is the first directorial effort of a 3l-year-old, Harvard- educated producer, Rob Cohen, whose previous projects include "The Wiz," one of the most overproduced and spectacular failures in recent years. In this sense, "Circle" is a cleansing operation. It's Cohen's attempt to show that he can make a small, viable, popular film. On these terms, the film succeeds.
Perhaps the best thing about "Circle" is its confirmation of the acting ability of Brad Davis, who hasn't been seen on the screen since electrifying audiences in the visceral "Midnight Express." Davis portrays a sort of Italo- American Sammy Glick with a social conscience in "Circle" and he plays him charmingly flat-out. There's a volcanic unpredictability to Davis on the screen that is quite intriguing. He seems to be constantly trying to suppress a sense of rage. It's something you can identify with.
Davis is supported nicely by Karen Allen, who plays the young woman he's rather hysterically in love with, and by Jameson Parker, who plays his best friend.
If I have any argument with the film it's that the emotions it purports to examine are more uncontrollable than the film, perhaps inadvertantly, suggests. In its desire to be nostalgic, the film blurs too many edges and softens much that was callous, hard, cynical and brutal about the era. The Vietnam era signified more an end to romantic notions than to a beginning of them. Copyright © 1980 Globe Newspaper Company