I expected more from this film, influenced, I guess, by my TV Guide which gave it a rating of three and a half out of four. It was directed by Sidney Lumet, who has done some fine New York City stories -- "Serpico", "The Pawnbroker" -- and the cast includes people like Sean Connery, Martin Balsam, and Christopher Walken. How could it go wrong? Well, it doesn't go wrong -- exactly. The first half, though, looks a lot like an ordinary caper movie. Connery is just out of jail and assembles and finances a handful of experts to rob an entire high-end apartment house of every valuable in every flat.
Lumet and his writers have even inserted a bit of humor, largely based on Martin Balsam's gay interior decorator, and Balsam is great in the role. He's given a couple of witty lines and moues that never quite go over the top, though they approach it. Ralph Meeker as Delaney, the police captain in charge, really DOES go over the top with his machine-processed working-class New York accent. There's ironic humor, too, in the incremental revelation that three of the conspirators are being covertly watched by three independent law-enforcement agencies, none of whom know about the others: Walken because the Narcs are interested in him, the black driver because he's a Black Panther, and the mobster who is providing the money because he's -- well, he's Italian. Not that the records play any part in the story, which is all the more reason for a talented guy like Quincy Jones to have avoided all those screeching electronic noises on the sound track.
But Lumet is a tragedian at heart. He ends few of his movies happily, a tendency he shares with some other directors and writers, like Roman Polanski and Stephen King. The last half of the film has the robbery crew hurrying about their business in the apartment house, not realizing the crime has already been detected, the street sealed off by police, and a Special Tactical Police Unit (or whatever it's called) is already rappelling down the side of the edifice. There is a climactic shoot out in which people are realistically killed.
Lumet has directed this uncertain story with noticeable skill. He intercuts long scenes of the preparation and execution of the robbery with briefer scenes of witnesses describing that happened to them. There are also cuts to the post-crime events involving police on the street. At first we're unsure of what's going on in the background except that we notice a lot of bustle. With each cut it becomes increasingly clear that what's going on is that dead bodies are being removed and put into an ambulance, so the audience only gradually becomes aware of the fact that the ending is going to be melancholy.
But in asking the viewer to make the leap from the assembly of a comic caper crew into tragedy, Lumet is asking a lot. Let me put it this way: Sean Connery is not the kind of actor who should be shot in the back and die.
Lumet and his writers have even inserted a bit of humor, largely based on Martin Balsam's gay interior decorator, and Balsam is great in the role. He's given a couple of witty lines and moues that never quite go over the top, though they approach it. Ralph Meeker as Delaney, the police captain in charge, really DOES go over the top with his machine-processed working-class New York accent. There's ironic humor, too, in the incremental revelation that three of the conspirators are being covertly watched by three independent law-enforcement agencies, none of whom know about the others: Walken because the Narcs are interested in him, the black driver because he's a Black Panther, and the mobster who is providing the money because he's -- well, he's Italian. Not that the records play any part in the story, which is all the more reason for a talented guy like Quincy Jones to have avoided all those screeching electronic noises on the sound track.
But Lumet is a tragedian at heart. He ends few of his movies happily, a tendency he shares with some other directors and writers, like Roman Polanski and Stephen King. The last half of the film has the robbery crew hurrying about their business in the apartment house, not realizing the crime has already been detected, the street sealed off by police, and a Special Tactical Police Unit (or whatever it's called) is already rappelling down the side of the edifice. There is a climactic shoot out in which people are realistically killed.
Lumet has directed this uncertain story with noticeable skill. He intercuts long scenes of the preparation and execution of the robbery with briefer scenes of witnesses describing that happened to them. There are also cuts to the post-crime events involving police on the street. At first we're unsure of what's going on in the background except that we notice a lot of bustle. With each cut it becomes increasingly clear that what's going on is that dead bodies are being removed and put into an ambulance, so the audience only gradually becomes aware of the fact that the ending is going to be melancholy.
But in asking the viewer to make the leap from the assembly of a comic caper crew into tragedy, Lumet is asking a lot. Let me put it this way: Sean Connery is not the kind of actor who should be shot in the back and die.