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pirateneckbeard4.0

My wife wanted to watch more Harry Dean Stanton(Was there another famous Harry Stanton?) movie and was curious about this and I obliged but warned her... it's a bummer of a film. However even though I stay with those remarks, I found myself feeling rewarded on what it tells us about humanity especially in an American society. Really Ulu Grosbard directs a top shelf dry material here in capturing a failing nation who lets there frail individuals wither and become the presumed connotations of what they picture them as instead of giving them a new lease on life and truly be reformed. I would be remised if I didn't mention how beautiful this film looks by the cinematographer Owen Roizman who captures this great 70's aesthetic of Los Angeles. So much dry sad beauty here on these faces emoting and can't state enough how excellent Dustin Hoffman(Max Dembo) is as the lead character and Theresa Russell as an emotional counterpoint that tethers this story. It's so engaging and poisons your heart at the same time but hard to look away. Truly a fantastic film and can't believe I was worried to do a rewatch of this film. Totally check this gem out.

Colin the dude5.0

Dustin Hoffman, Harry Dean Stanton and Gary Busey get into a car to go rob a jewelry store. Right there, you owe it to yourself to see Straight Time. But it's also a gripping genre piece and gut-punching character study both at the same time, smack dab in the 70s golden age of paranoid crime pictures. If you consider yourself an avid fan of heist movies about volatile criminals, if Reservoir Dogs is your cup of tea, if you've seen and liked The Driver or Dog Day Afternoon, and you haven't seen or heard of Straight Time, then you're in for one of the more under-appreciated highlights in the genre and you should familiarize yourself with it, pronto.

Josh Lewis4.0

A very tragic and considered crime drama that as others have mentioned feels in some respects like the blueprint for the intelligent, fatalistic ex-con humanity and existentialism of Michael Mann. (Was not surprised to learn he did an uncredited draft, the romantic scenes especially are dripping with his sensitive detail about prison life and the kinds of attitudes necessary to adopt to survive it.) However there's an interesting quality to this that could've only come out of this period of the 70s, where Mann would eventually drench this material in impressionistic style this has a hard and blunt sense of almost resignation that's served well by French Connection and Taking of Pelham One Two Three cinematographer Owen Roizman's blunt, grimy economy and Hoffman's excellent stone-faced mask of a performance that only in specific moments slips to reveal his stubborn, quivering impulsiveness. Was really taken by the ease with which this flips from its more realistic, mundane register of the American "rehabilitative" process of violent humiliation and dehumanization (adapted from Ed Bunker’s real life experiences as an abused, troubled juvenile and career criminal) and its more desperate, exciting armed robbery thriller elements that both tap into this brutal idea of what's logically bound to happen when you try to pound people into submitting to you. Gets really dark in its final moments when Hoffman starts to realize in some ways he's maybe done what the state did to him to his own friends. Anyway, obviously loved this, and the new Warner restoration looked gorgeous on the big screen.Full discussion on ep 281 of my podcast SLEAZOIDS.