THE OUTFIT

year: 1973

cast: Robert Duvall, Joe Don Baker, Karen Black, Timothy Carey, Robert Ryan

rating: ***1/2

A bank robber, having done two years after being set up, gets out of jail, learns his brother was killed (the first scene in the movie) by the same mob that fingered him and, with the help of his former partner and a very cranky gun moll, hit the road, killing all the encroaching thugs and sometimes take out the baddies in their homes, fortresses, banks, and even a church. The two main characters played by Robert Duvall and Joe Don Baker seem protected by the gods. Nothing can stop them, and it's pretty unrealistic in that they get away with everything with ease, but then again, who cares? It's a cool ride... and what a cast!

SMALL TIME CROOKS

Year: 2000
Rating: **1/2

Without giving credit, Woody Allen basically remakes LARCENY INC. where, in that Edward G. Robinson B&W crime-caper, thieves dig from underneath their strategically purchased suitcase store to a bank: The store winds up making more money than they'd have stolen, and Woody changes the business to cookies while SMALL TIME CROOKS plays so with many old movie cliches it seems more a parody than a remake...

Woody shifts from his usual neurotic movie-loving intellectual to a contentedly simple-minded ex con (the biggest stretch is when he thinks Humphrey Bogart's gold seeking SIERRA MADRE set classic is titled TREASURE ISLAND). And he's definitely not alone: Wife Tracey Ullman (the cookie-maker) provides the buried lead, especially during a very abrupt second-act shift as LARCENY morphs into MY FAIR LADY as Hugh Grant plays an intellectual art dealer doubling as a very subtle shyster...

Perhaps too genuine to be genuinely crooked, or all that interesting beyond good looks to fool a street savvy dame, he's constantly holding his proper, pompous tongue, giving loaded etiquette lessons to the new-rich ex-stripper, who has no education and even less taste in clothes, furniture — you name it. And while, overall, SMALL TIME CROOKS is a guilty pleasure, there's genuine heart in director/actress Elaine May as Ullman's kooky cousin...

Whether strolling along waterfront walkways from ANNIE HALL and HANNAH AND HER SISTERS or watching TV while admiring James Cagney's Cody Jarrett for loving his infamous mother — Elaine and Woody have far more chemistry (and funnier one-liners) than the frenzied marrieds, whose HONEYMOONERS banter gets annoying, quick. And good news/bad news: Woody and Elaine returned years later, as a married couple in the Amazon Series, CRISIS IN SIX SCENES. But it made this movie seem like MANHATTAN by comparison, or, more fitting, TAKE THE MONEY AND RUN, Woody's first and funniest role as a criminal.

THE GETAWAY (SAM PECKINPAH)

year: 1972

rating: *****

The opening credit sequence alone, a montage of Steve McQueen as "Doc McCoy" in prison, shows more of the loneliness, solitude and torture of being locked up than some films that take place entirely behind bars. When he's set free on a "special parole"... he's got an assignment to rob a bank. Along with his wife and two thugs, both working for crime boss Ben Johnson... the goons played by Al Lettieri and Bo Hopkins... the heist is a success and failure both. That is, they got the money but there was a murder of a guard - and now all three robbers - Hopkins being killed by Lettieri - are on the run. This is, to me, the best action film ever made, flowling smoothly from one little adventure to the next... all enveloped within the main goal - to get to the border with the loot: our heroes having to avoid being caught by cops, killed by Lettieri, and keeping their relationship intact. The only drawback are the acting of... or rather, the non-acting of Ali McGraw... who most of the time delivers her lines as if she were heavily medicated on barbiturates; and Sally Struthers, playing Al Lettieri's moll, grates heavily on the nerves. But that stuff doesn't hinder the outcome. THE GETAWAY is pure Peckinpah perfection all the way. "Punch it, baby!"