Good Lost 70’s Flick — Typically Offbeat, Yet (**** SPOILERS ****)
Yet another of the One Hundred 70’s Movies You Can’t See (until recently). So many major studio films of that decade, with major stars, completely unavailable on home video for decades (this one made its debut in 2011, 38 years after release).
The Bad:
Mostly, it’s just not very realistic.
As with so many movies written by Hollywood screenwriters, marriage and family life don’t exist here.
Everything is first class: the best hotels, the best suits and jewelry, the finest restaurants. In reality, most traveling workers (including criminals) do just the opposite, trying to shave every dime off expenses to maximize earnings. (Hollywood prefers to glamorize everything.) Which leads to ...
No one seems to have any money. They spent it all on broads, diamonds, suits, and expensive dinners. Notice Harry *rents* his bachelor pad. No one owns anything or has any money for bail when Casey gets pinched. Which begs the question ...
What is Harry’s retirement plan? For a street crook getting long in the tooth, he doesn’t seem to have one. That doesn’t square with a guy who understands probability, that getting caught is “bound to happen.” Neither he nor Casey ever consider buying real estate or maybe some mutual funds?
Would Sandy really have slept with Harry? I don’t think so, but with all that working together and someone as charismatic as Harry I admit it’s always a possibility. Still methinks this is mostly a nod to the free-spirited early 70’s culture — when it was cool to cheat. This also leads to a problem with the ending (see below).
The Good:
Reminds me of The Hustler.
Not as good, but then no movie is.
Very nice detailing of actual lingo and practice of a secret criminal art.
These filmmakers knew their subject.
Commonplace in 70’s films, yet virtually unknown today.
Some good work by Coburn and Pidgeon, maybe even Mrs. Devere. I liked the characters and was sorry when the movie ended. I wanted to spend more time with all of them.
About that ending ...
Although I have trouble accepting Sandy’s infidelity, it’s no stretch to see Harry cuckolding Ray without a second thought. It’s clear from go that Harry considers Ray an expendable loser. So why then does Harry decide not to let Ray take the fall at the end by breaking Harry’s Rule? Had he let Ray take the wallet, Ray alone would have been arrested, allowing Harry to have Sandy all to himself. Taking the fall himself may make for a nice Honor Among Thieves stand, but it’s inconsistent with what the film has set up: Harry never holds. And certainly not when doing so gets in the way of what he wants.
BTW, I think had Harry made it to the trash can they would have found the wallet and arrested him anyway.