It Reads Better Than It Lives
The Anderson Tapes (1971)
directed by Sidney Lumet
rating: 2 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from Netflix
Why do Sidney Lumet movies feel so out of touch to me? I want to describe The Anderson Tapes as a breezy, fleet-footed lark, tipping its hat to the paranoia of the era even as it reveals Big Brother surveillance for the inept machine it is. Instead, I'm inclined to think that someone wants to sneak something past me: a moral lesson, probably, or some broad cynicism that the facts of this feel-good caper don't earn.
Nothing beats New York-based "social realist" pictures for outrageous gay stereotypes (Anderson has at least two), and 1971 was a bad year for the usual nonsense about women not knowing what they want until a man with ambition tells them what it is. The joke is that Sean Connery's every move as a post-parole burglar is bugged, photographed, or recorded on camera, although he isn't the primary subject of any of the dozen or more investigations. He sets out to rob his girlfriend's apartment complex, and a heist picture takes shape even as the mastermind's hard work becomes comedy fodder at the hands of a group of uncooperative victims.
But if it's a comedy, why the heavy-handed stand-off just before the credits? The balance between strategy (how, exactly, a police team scales and enters the building) and laughs (a kid calls in the kidnapping by way of Kansas from his ham radio) seems laudable, but nothing floats the way it should. Lumet sounds like a crank in interviews, with all the usual New York blinders ("I've known a lot of cops;" "In L.A., there's no streets! No sense of a neighborhood!"). I'm the first to admit that a quote from 2007 is a lazy way to work back to 1971, so here's a lazy cover-up: whatever else he may have done, he wanted his ashes scattered at a deli. And The Anderson Tapes could be better.
directed by Sidney Lumet
rating: 2 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from Netflix
Why do Sidney Lumet movies feel so out of touch to me? I want to describe The Anderson Tapes as a breezy, fleet-footed lark, tipping its hat to the paranoia of the era even as it reveals Big Brother surveillance for the inept machine it is. Instead, I'm inclined to think that someone wants to sneak something past me: a moral lesson, probably, or some broad cynicism that the facts of this feel-good caper don't earn.
Nothing beats New York-based "social realist" pictures for outrageous gay stereotypes (Anderson has at least two), and 1971 was a bad year for the usual nonsense about women not knowing what they want until a man with ambition tells them what it is. The joke is that Sean Connery's every move as a post-parole burglar is bugged, photographed, or recorded on camera, although he isn't the primary subject of any of the dozen or more investigations. He sets out to rob his girlfriend's apartment complex, and a heist picture takes shape even as the mastermind's hard work becomes comedy fodder at the hands of a group of uncooperative victims.
But if it's a comedy, why the heavy-handed stand-off just before the credits? The balance between strategy (how, exactly, a police team scales and enters the building) and laughs (a kid calls in the kidnapping by way of Kansas from his ham radio) seems laudable, but nothing floats the way it should. Lumet sounds like a crank in interviews, with all the usual New York blinders ("I've known a lot of cops;" "In L.A., there's no streets! No sense of a neighborhood!"). I'm the first to admit that a quote from 2007 is a lazy way to work back to 1971, so here's a lazy cover-up: whatever else he may have done, he wanted his ashes scattered at a deli. And The Anderson Tapes could be better.
posted by NPK at 8:43 AM
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