Without ever aspiring to the top, Eddie has made a living in organized crime for most of his life. In a way, he's an all-purpose go-getter, available to buy off some stolen guns, drive a hijacked truck, or for the most part make himself handy. Some years ago after a gun trade, the buyers he stocked got pinched. Their friends smashed Eddie's fingers in a drawer. It made sense to him. There is a clear-cut discipline without which it would be frankly absurd to go on doing business. But as the movie opens, Eddie is in a situation, and it looks like he'll have to provoke that discipline.
He's facing a two-year stretch in New Hampshire, and he wants out of it. He doesn't want to leave his wife and kids and see them go on welfare. Deep down, he is simply a small businessman, and genuinely middle class. He assumes perhaps he can make a deal with the state's attorney and have a nice word put in for him up in New Hampshire. This unsentimental potboiler, by director of Bullitt and The Hot Rock, though replete with bank heists, machine guns and hitlists, is as sheer as that. It's not a restless gangster film, it doesn't have a lot of self-evident adventure in it, and it doesn't plough into much violence. Presumably, Paul Monash's screenplay is by no means unfaithful to George Higgins' novel. The movie offers us a guy and seeks our understanding for him. And for me that's extraordinary because Eddie is played by Robert Mitchum, and Mitchum has never been better.
Mitchum has always been a wry beefcake, putting on airs of aloofness. More than half his films have been formulaic action melodramas that might've been better with a more natural actor. Here however, he couldn't be more natural: a tired old man, yet rugged and comfortable with himself, a man who has been shaken too often in life not to appreciate trouble, but who will put himself at risk to defend his own domain. Still though, he doesn't quite upstage Peter Boyle or Steven Keats. The narrative isn't unfolded in the conventional crime movie manner, with incalculable value being given to complexities of plot. Rather, Eddie's catch-22 dawns on him as it dawns on us, and we watch him lock horns with it.
He's facing a two-year stretch in New Hampshire, and he wants out of it. He doesn't want to leave his wife and kids and see them go on welfare. Deep down, he is simply a small businessman, and genuinely middle class. He assumes perhaps he can make a deal with the state's attorney and have a nice word put in for him up in New Hampshire. This unsentimental potboiler, by director of Bullitt and The Hot Rock, though replete with bank heists, machine guns and hitlists, is as sheer as that. It's not a restless gangster film, it doesn't have a lot of self-evident adventure in it, and it doesn't plough into much violence. Presumably, Paul Monash's screenplay is by no means unfaithful to George Higgins' novel. The movie offers us a guy and seeks our understanding for him. And for me that's extraordinary because Eddie is played by Robert Mitchum, and Mitchum has never been better.
Mitchum has always been a wry beefcake, putting on airs of aloofness. More than half his films have been formulaic action melodramas that might've been better with a more natural actor. Here however, he couldn't be more natural: a tired old man, yet rugged and comfortable with himself, a man who has been shaken too often in life not to appreciate trouble, but who will put himself at risk to defend his own domain. Still though, he doesn't quite upstage Peter Boyle or Steven Keats. The narrative isn't unfolded in the conventional crime movie manner, with incalculable value being given to complexities of plot. Rather, Eddie's catch-22 dawns on him as it dawns on us, and we watch him lock horns with it.