Bank Shot (1974)

          To get a sense of the endearingly fluffy humor that pervades this caper flick, consider a moment when bumbling FBI agent Streiger (Clifton James) shows his team surveillance footage of master criminal Walter Upjohn Ballantine (George C. Scott). First, the surveillance camera is angled away from Ballantine because the cameraman is ogling a pretty girl’s figure, and second, Ballantine reveals he’s aware of the surveillance camera by dabbing the lens with the tip of an ice cream cone. Gritty realism this is not. Yet while some other adaptations of lighthearted crime books by author Donald E. Westlake spiral into stupidity, the Westlake adaptation Bank Shot comes awfully close to cooking that most delicate soufflé of pure farce, especially during sequences of epic-proportioned slapstick. It helps, of course, to have a leading actor of consummate skill, since Scott plays every single scene perfectly straight, no matter how absurd the circumstances. Together with an adept supporting cast and the confident direction of Gower Champion (a former dancer and choreographer), Scott’s performance makes Bank Shot highly entertaining.

          The plot is a standard Westlake lark. Career thief Ballantine, whom Scott portrays with comically bushy eyebrows and a pronounced lisp, is stuck in a prison work farm until his excitable accomplice, A. G. Karp (Sorrel Burke), visits with news that a bank has been identified as vulnerable for robbery. Ballantine stages a ridiculous escape by hijacking an earthmover and bulldozing his way through prison walls. Then he meets the unimpressive crew Karp has gathered. These offbeat theives include a nebbish ex-FBI agent (Bob Balaban), a jittery goodfella (Don Calfa), and a sexy society dame (Joanna Cassidy) who’s moonlighting as a crook for thrills. Karp’s undercooked plan involves robbing a bank that’s temporarily housed in a mobile home, so Ballantine arrives at an audacious method—hook the mobile home to a truck, cart it away to a safe location, and crack the bank’s vault later.

          Even though the movie is very brief (83 minutes), Bank Shot includes a string of goofy running gangs, like the trope of Ballantine dosing himself with saltpeter in order to resist the advances of Cassidy’s character, lest he get distracted from his task. (Cassidy, playing one of her earliest major film roles, enlivens the picture with her carefree spirit and throaty laugh.) The picture is handsomely shot and quickly paced, though it slows down, appropriately, during moments displaying the thieves’ careful technique; watch for the bit when an explosives man gets more and more frustrated each time a charge proves insufficient for blowing a safe open. Bank Shot gets very cartoonish toward the end, with Streiger and his men chasing after a runaway mobile home—c’mon, you knew that was going to happen—but the charm of the main performances and the cheerful unpretentiousness of the whole enterprise compensate for a lot of rough edges.

Bank Shot: GROOVY

Report to the Commissioner (1975)

          Back in my college days, when I lived in Manhattan, I was friendly with an NYPD homicide detective who was also a movie buff, and he hipped me to this little-seen drama, praising it as one of the most accurate depictions he’d ever seen about how ugly the gamesmanship within a police force can get. And, indeed, even though Report to the Commissioner is fictional—it’s based on a novel by James Mills—the picture radiates authenticity. Extensive location photography captures the dirty heat of summertime New York City; intense performances burst with streetwise attitude; and the vicious storyline is driven by cynicism, duplicity, and politics. Told in flashback following some sort of terrible clusterfuck of a shootout at Saks Fifth Avenue, the picture reveals how an ambitious undercover detective and a rookie investigator cross paths, with tragic results.

          Michael Moriarty, appearing near the beginning of his long career, stars as hapless Detective Bo Lockley, a newcomer to the NYPD investigative squad who gets paired with a seen-it-all partner, African-American Richard “Crunch” Blackstone (Yaphet Kott0). In a telling early sequence, Lockley watches Blackstone lean on black suspects, even going so far as to spew racial epithets, which clues Lockley into the level of moral compromise required of NYPD lifers. Meanwhile, unbeknownst to Lockley, undercover narcotics cop Patty Butler (Susan Blakley), a pretty blonde WASP who uses her looks to undercut suspicions that she’s a police officer, gets a lead on a well-connected dealer named Thomas “Stick” Henderson (Tony King). Smelling an opportunity for a high-profile bust that will help his career, Butler’s commanding officer, Captain D’Angelo (Hector Elizondo), approves a dangerous plan for spying on Stick. Soon afterward, Lockley gets pulled into the situation—without being given crucial information—and things go to hell. The movie climaxes with a tense hostage situation inside Saks, during which high-ranking cops put more energy into covering their asses than saving innocent victims.

          This is dark stuff, making Report to the Commissioner a fine companion piece to Sidney Lumet’s various ’70s pictures about cops and criminals in New York City. And while Report to the Commissioner is far from perfect—the script meanders into subplots and some of the characters could have been consolidated for the purpose of clarity—the movie has myriad virtues. The atmosphere sizzles, with cinematographer Mario Tosi using haze filters and wide lenses to depict grungy exteriors and sweaty interiors. Director Milton Katselas, best known as an acting teacher, demonstrates a real gift for integrating actors into spaces and thereby creating verisimilitude. Best of all, though, are the film’s potent performances. Blakely’s sharp in a smallish role, King is physically and verbally impressive, and Moriarty’s weirdly twitchy energy is compelling. Furthermore, it’s hard to beat the roster of eclectic supporting players—beyond Elizondo and Kotto, the picture features Bob Balaban, William Devane, Dana Elcar, Richard Gere (in his first film role), and Vic Tayback. (Available as part of the MGM Limited Collection on Amazon.com)

Report to the Commissioner: RIGHT ON

Making It (1971)

          When the lyrics of a movie’s opening theme proclaim, “Everybody’s busy learning yesterday, but I’m into tomorrow—that’s a better way,” you know you’re in for a dated Generation Gap story about a hip kid showing uptight adults what it’s all about, man. And while many movies of this stripe are unwatchable today, thanks to arrogant leading characters and pretentious themes, Making It is more worthwhile than its lurid title might suggest. The hero of the piece is Phil (Kristoffer Tabori), a high-school schemer who’s juggling sexual affairs with Debbie (Sherry Miles), a dim-bulb classmate, and Yvonne (Marlyn Mason), the horny wife of his gym coach. Meanwhile, Phil’s mom, Betty (Joyce Van Patten), is a lonely divorcée looking to start over with bland but reliable businessman Warren (Dick Van Patten), who happens to be married to another woman. The depiction of Phil’s home life explains why he finds monogamy overrated, but as the story progresses, Phil discovers the consequences of cocksmanship—he gets Debbie pregnant, runs into a hassle with Yvonne’s husband, and so on.

          Until his comeuppance, Phil is a self-aware operator who talks the talk of a disaffected ’70s rebel in order to court older women (sample pickup line: “That’s where it’s at, being honest with each other”). Yet the filmmakers ensure that we can always see the naïve young man beneath the swaggering façade. All of this may sound rather ordinary, and, indeed, Making It is a minor film in every way. However, the picture’s acting, direction, and writing are so smooth that Making It ends up exemplifying the entire post-Graduate genre. More importantly, the film follows its storyline to a logical conclusion instead of merely stirring up unresolved ambiguity.

          Tabori, the son of B-movie director Don Siegel, is strong in the leading role, effectively blending innocence with sass, and the supporting players are solid—the cast also includes Bob Balaban, as Phil’s snide crony, and David Doyle, as an exasperated administrator. Prolific character actor Lawrence Pressman is especially good as a teacher who sarcastically challenges Phil’s vision of kids leading the charge for social change: “I propose a new flag,” the teacher says at one point, “no stars, just acne.” A little much, sure, but it gets the point across. Interestingly, the film’s screenplay was penned by then-studio executive Peter Bart, who later gained fame as the editor-in-chief of Varietyand as the host of various TV shows about showbiz. Nice to know he made a respectable effort during his brief tenure in the trenches of Hollywood’s creative scene.

Making It: GROOVY