Tuesday, October 21, 2014

Overlooked Movies: Straight Time

Straight Time is based on the Edward Bunker novel No Beast So Fierce.  If you've ever doubted that Dustin Hoffman is a great actor, just see this movie.  He plays Max Dembo, a guy who's just out of prison.  His parole officer, Earl, is played with M. Emmett Walsh, who plays sleazy as well as anyone ever did.

Max gets a job through an employment agency, where a secretary named Jenny (a young and beautiful Theresa Russell) falls for him.  Hoffman seems set for the straight life.

But he's not.  His old buddy Willy (Gary Busey) pays him a visit and shoots up in the apartment.  Earl snoops around later and sends Max to jail, where he's proved to be clean.  Earl lets him sit there for a week, anyway.  When Earl picks Max up, Max gets his revenge and realizes that he can never live the straight life.  He goes back to his old ways, robbing a bank with his good friend Jerry (Harry Dean Stanton).  That goes okay, but after that it's all downhill.  

I'd call this a noir film if not for the ending.  It's close, even at that.  I've never read the novel, so I don't know how it ends.  

Straight Time isn't a great movie, but it has some wonderful performances by everybody I've mentioned and also Kathy Bates as Gary Busey's wife.  Well worth a look if you're interested in the forgotten films of the '70s.

4 comments:

pattinase (abbott) said...

This is a real gritty movie. Hoffman made a few of them about then. Very much worth seeing again.

Gerard said...

I once caught this on TV and was impressed. I'm not sure if I was able to watch the whole picture.

I read two or three of Bunker's books and he lived and wrote some tough stuff.

Unknown said...

I forgot to mention that he has a cameo in the movie, too.

Dave Zeltserman said...

This is one of my favorites.