1st watched 10/4/2010 -- 7 out of 10 (Dir-Sidney Lumet): Interesting early 70's crime caper with Sean Connery as a recently released burglar who doesn't give up his expertise and decides to take on robbing an entire apartment complex(where his girlfriend lives) as his next job. To accomplish the task, he assembles a team of misfits that provide some comic relief. At the same time, the cops are taping his every move(thus the Anderson Tapes) illegally--- but apparently they don't think he's been completely rehabilitated. His team includes Martin Balsam, playing a gay character realistically, an elderly man from his prison days, and Christopher Walken(in an early role) playing a young guy who does some of the minial tasks. The movie throws in strange sound effects anytime any kind of sound or image capture device is shown giving the viewer kind of an education into all of these things that are available and providing a kind of strange, trippy, psychedelic soundtrack(what the heck it was made in those days -- you know). The director, Sidney Lumet, plays it out at a slow pace, not unlike the way it might work in real life, and keeps your interest until the very end. The only down part of the movie, in my opinion, is there is no real connection between the tapes and any attempt to capture the robbers(it would be interesting to see how this was dealt with in the book). Another winner by an under-rated director with a group of very capable stars to carry out this unexpectedly well-done movie.
Review of The Anderson Tapes
