By Richard Winters
My Rating: 6 out of 10
4-Word Review: Convicts escape from jail.
Bowie (Keith Carradine) is a young man stuck in jail due to a murder conviction from when he was a teenager. He teams up with Chicamaw (John Schuck) a middle-aged man to escape from prison and meet-up with T-Dub (Bert Remsen) an older man who has them hide-out at a local auto garage where Bowie meets the owner’s daughter Keechie (Shelley Duvall) and the two start-up a relationship. The three men return to their criminal ways by robbing banks, which goes well for awhile until the quick-triggered Chicamaw shoots and kills a bank clerk, which gets him recaptured and returned to prison. Bowie, who has now gotten Keechie pregnant, feels a loyalty to help get Chicamaw out, but Keechie wants him to settle down and get a conventional job while learning to become a family man. Bowie though resists the urge and after leaving Keechie at a motel cabin owned by Mattie (Louise Fletcher) sets out to help Chicamaw break-out for a second time, but this ultimately leads to tragedy.
The film was based on the novel of the same name written by Edward Anderson and published in 1937. The book had been adapted before in 1949 as They Live By Night, which Robert Altman was not aware of before taking on the project. Joan Tewksbury, his longtime screenwriter, adapted the book in a matter of 4-days, but getting it financied proved challenging and it was only after Altman and two of his other producers offered to mortgage their homes to help bring in needed capital that it eventually got green-lit. Unfortunately once it was completed the studio didn’t know how to promote it and ultimately released it without any advertising budget or fanfare. After a brief 3-week stay in the theaters it fell into obscurity before being resurrected by critical acclaim, which made it do well on cable television and has since gained a small cult following.
The atmosphere is probably the best thing as Altman achieves an authentic 1930’s setting. Other films that try to recreate the era always come-off a bit affected and cliched, but because Altman actually grew up during the period he’s able to give it the needed grittiness and I felt right from the start I was being transported to a different time versus feeling like I’m looking back at a bygone era through a modern day lens. The film has two very memorable moments. One of them is when Bowie goes to the prison to help Chicamaw breakout and meets up with the prison warden who’s residing in this country-style house and feasting on a large dinner. The contrast of this home cooked meal prepared by his wife like they were peacefully living out on a rural farm versus stationed right in the middle of a prison with dangerous criminals is something I really loved. The bank robbery game that the three men play with Mattie’s children where they turn their living room into a make believe bank with the children playing bank clerks and then the men proceed to ‘rob it’ is quite cute as well.
The acting is excellent by Carradine who starts to come into his own during his moments with Duvall, who is also good and does her very first fully nude scene. Lousie Fletcher, who’s first movie this was after she took a 10-year hiatus to help raise her kids, is supreme and helps give the proceedings a very definite, no-nonsense attitude and it’s just a shame she wasn’t in it more though the segments she does have she makes the most of. Tom Skeritt turns out to be a delightful surprise here. Normally I’ve found his work to be rather forgettable and under the radar, but here he stands-out as an alcoholic father who’s a pathetic character with darkly amusing lines.
The film though does suffer from Schmuck’s and Remsen’s characters seeming too much alike and I found the rapport between them to be quite unenlightening. Altman also takes a page out of Hitchcock’s directing book where like with what Hitch did in Frenzy he has the camera pull back away from the action going on inside the building and focusing instead on what’s going on outside. He especially does this during the robberies, which is initially kind of interesting, but he does it too much and then when he finally does show a robbery in progress he does solely from a bird’s-eye view with the camera nailed to the ceiling, which causes the viewer to feel too emotionally detached from what’s happening. He also completely skips over the part where T-Dub gets shot and killed and Chicamaw recaptured, the viewer only learns of this by hearing it reported on the radio, but these are pivotal moments to the story and the film is slow enough the way it is, so this is the type of action that should’ve been played-out.
Spoiler Alert!
The climactic sequence where the cabin that Bowie is in gets surrounded by Rangers and shot-up doesn’t work at all. This is mainly because it’s too reminiscent of the same type of shoot-up done in Bonnie and Clyde that was more famous and riveting. Here it comes-off like a second-rate imitation of that one and does nothing but make you want to go back and see that one while completely forgetting about this one in the process.
My Rating: 6 out of 10
Released: February 11, 1974
Runtime: 2 Hours 3 Minutes
Rated R
Director: Robert Altman
Studio: United Artists
Available: DVD, Blu-ray
Scopophilia 