The Anderson Tapes. (15.)
Directed by Sidney Lumet. 1971.
Starring Sean Connery, Dyan Cannon, Martin Balsam, Ralph Meeker, Alan King, Garret Morris and Christopher Walken. Out on Blu-ray from Indicator films on 16th November. 97 mins.
After doing ten years for safecracking, Connery emerges from prison in the early seventies to find that it is 1984. Everywhere he goes, the ex-con is under surveillance. He can't move without popping up on a wiretap. If he knew he'd feel persecuted; if he knew that none of them was actively aimed at him and his proposed criminal enterprise he'd feel slighted.
Anderson, aka Duke, is an angry, righteous criminal eager to get back the ten years he feels have been taken away from him. He rages at the injustices of the world as he walks out of prison to hook up with an ex-girlfriend (Cannon), a prostitute who has been set up in a swanky apartment in an upscale block near Central Park. This would seem to be a cushy number but, after so long away, Anderson is keen to get back into crime.
The job he sets up is a slick, upmarket, high tech heist that is totally stupid. Everybody involved appears to be a highly skilled specialist, yet every one of them addresses each other with their real names or easily identifiable nicknames. What do you make of an operation whose brains has just got out of prison, shacks up with an old lover (Cannon), a high-class prostitute living in a luxury New York block, and immediately decides that he'll rob this place? The place where he's been staying for the last few weeks. After leaving prison. For robbery.
To be honest, the film didn't really click with me but there's lots to like in it. There's an exceptional cast, including a first mainstream film role for Walken, most of whom are on top form. Best of all there is a toupee-free Connery. This was the second of five films with Lumet, a director who always got the best out of him.
If nothing else, Lumet's 1971 thriller was prophetic. Within a couple of years, the president would be entangled in the scandal of his own compulsive home taping habit. The New York of the Anderson Tapes is a jostling, grimy vista of humanity (as Lumet New Yorks tend to be), with a cop, gangster of undercover agent on every corner. It's a how-did-we-come-to-this vision of America, from a time when they believed that Nixon would be the lowest point in the Republican party's ongoing Presidential limbo dance.
Directed by Sidney Lumet. 1971.
Starring Sean Connery, Dyan Cannon, Martin Balsam, Ralph Meeker, Alan King, Garret Morris and Christopher Walken. Out on Blu-ray from Indicator films on 16th November. 97 mins.
After doing ten years for safecracking, Connery emerges from prison in the early seventies to find that it is 1984. Everywhere he goes, the ex-con is under surveillance. He can't move without popping up on a wiretap. If he knew he'd feel persecuted; if he knew that none of them was actively aimed at him and his proposed criminal enterprise he'd feel slighted.
Anderson, aka Duke, is an angry, righteous criminal eager to get back the ten years he feels have been taken away from him. He rages at the injustices of the world as he walks out of prison to hook up with an ex-girlfriend (Cannon), a prostitute who has been set up in a swanky apartment in an upscale block near Central Park. This would seem to be a cushy number but, after so long away, Anderson is keen to get back into crime.
The job he sets up is a slick, upmarket, high tech heist that is totally stupid. Everybody involved appears to be a highly skilled specialist, yet every one of them addresses each other with their real names or easily identifiable nicknames. What do you make of an operation whose brains has just got out of prison, shacks up with an old lover (Cannon), a high-class prostitute living in a luxury New York block, and immediately decides that he'll rob this place? The place where he's been staying for the last few weeks. After leaving prison. For robbery.
To be honest, the film didn't really click with me but there's lots to like in it. There's an exceptional cast, including a first mainstream film role for Walken, most of whom are on top form. Best of all there is a toupee-free Connery. This was the second of five films with Lumet, a director who always got the best out of him.
If nothing else, Lumet's 1971 thriller was prophetic. Within a couple of years, the president would be entangled in the scandal of his own compulsive home taping habit. The New York of the Anderson Tapes is a jostling, grimy vista of humanity (as Lumet New Yorks tend to be), with a cop, gangster of undercover agent on every corner. It's a how-did-we-come-to-this vision of America, from a time when they believed that Nixon would be the lowest point in the Republican party's ongoing Presidential limbo dance.
