"A Guy Walks Out of Prison"

MINOR SPOILERS

Straight Time opens with Dustin Hoffman walking out of prison for the first time in six years, we meet him practically at the gate, about to leave, we get none of the 'processing" of the final release inside the prison. Noteable: someone is waiting for the other prisoners walking out(speaking Spanish, in one case), but no one is waiting for Hoffman. This tells us something about him right away -- he has no one. No wife, girlfriend, mother, father, siblings -- NO ONE waiting for him after 6 years in the slammer.

Straight Time goes on to play in two distinct parts: (1) Hoffman trying to make it on the outside "straight" -- with a tiny hovel apartment, a small job at a can factory, a rather quickly won girlfriend and then (2) Hoffman snapping in rebellion against his parole officer and dooming himself back into the life of crime that is the only work he really wants to do.

Its a fine, gripping, very realistic story -- but it reminded me that several shall we say "less gritty" versions of the same opening appeared both before and after Straight Time:

The Anderson Files(1971) Opens with Sean Connery being released from prison. No one is waiting for him, but a gorgeous girlfriend is waiting(with sex ready to go) at her apartment.
The Hot Rock(1972) Opens with Robert Redford being released from prison -- his brother-in-law George Segal is waiting for him.
The Getaway(1972) Opens with Steve McQueen being released from prison(after some time-shifting to his "working life at the prison" via director Sam Peckinpah.) Wife Ali MacGraw is waiting for him.

And later than Straight Time -- The Blues Brothers (1980) opens with John Belushi(Jake Blues) being released from prison(his check-out processing includes a box that contains a used condom.) His brother Dan Ackroyd (Elwood Blues) is waiting for him.

"Straight Time" is easily the most grim and realistic of these tales, but the others pretty much posit something interesting: Connery, Redford, and McQueen all, upon immediate release from prison, IMMEDIATELY sign up with old criminal pals to pull off a new job. A prison officer bemusedly asks Redford "This time, could you think about going straight?" and Redford's reply is, "Sorry, my heart wouldn't be in it."

As for Jake and Elwood, they don't immediately plot a crime caper once Jake is released, but they both end up back in prison at the end, anyway (for crimes along the way to fufill their "Mission From God" to get money for an orphanage.)

Only in the Hoffman story does the released con at least TRY to go straight, for awhile -- but the film demonstrates how hard that can be, and the poverty that comes with it. So soon, Hoffman joins Connery, Redford and McQueen in re-upping for a life of crime.

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Its perhaps an indication of how gritty 70s movies were that all of these movies posited criminals just released from prison and ready to rob again, as the HEROES -- and cast pretty big stars as those criminals. But only Hoffman in the bunch elected to take on a REAL feeling story, about a REAL "mean man" whose criminal exploits are grim, nasty, tragic and sociopathic.

A "70's sub-genre."

PS A friend I had who worked in the penal system suggested that many convicts prefer the three hots and a cot of controlled prison life to "trying to make it on the outside earning a living." So they see a release as "a vacation from prison" and, when they are ready to go back in, they do a crime to make it happen.