THE ANDERSON TAPES (1971)

We meet career safecracker Duke Anderson (Sean Connery, at right) in his last therapy session before he is freed from a ten year prison sentence. He tells the group that blowing open a safe and plunging in was sexually arousing, comparing it to both seduction and rape. The session is routinely recorded on tape—a recurring motif here is how much of what we do in our modern life is caught on tape, video or audio. When he leaves prison, most of what Anderson does is recorded, the irony being that none of the surveillance is aimed at him; we see him caught on tapes intended to record the actions of others, whether Black Panther members, drug dealers, or cheating mistresses. Anderson visits his former lover Ingrid (Dyan Cannon) who has become a high class call girl who is kept by her older lover in a fancy apartment building. He comes up with the idea of one last big heist: break into the building over the quiet Labor Day weekend and clean out most of the residents' valuables. He collects some old gang members, enlists the aid of a gay antiques dealer (Martin Balsam) who can accompany the gang and let them know what's worth stealing, and begs favors from a Mafia boss who asks Anderson to employ a pain-in-the-ass psycho named Socks, then kill him afterwards. The plan works at first as the residents are burgled (and interact with the crooks in varying degrees of humor or danger), but a paraplegic boy whom Anderson didn't know about is able to call for help over his ham radio, and things don't wrap up as planned.

This is a fun heist movie, not a comedy exactly (though I can see "black comedy" being used as a descriptive genre) but generally played lightly. Connery gives a very good performance, trying to keep things under control and keep his cool as things slowly fall apart. Cannon is fine in the first half but has little to do later. Though the gay character is portrayed in a dated stereotypical fashion that modern viewers may not like, Balsam manages to make him interesting and relatively inoffensive. Christopher Walken has his first major film role as a young crook. Another film newcomer is Garrett Morris who plays a cop given an important part in the climax. Margaret Hamilton has what amounts to a cameo as an elderly resident whose reading habits incline toward The Story of O, and Judith Lowry is fun as Hamilton's disapproving roommate. There is fine support from Alan King (the Mafia boss), Conrad Bain, Stan Gottlieb, Anthony Holland and Ralph Meeker. I won't spoil what happens with the tapes (a lovely final moment of irony) except to say that they are no help to the police. If this was produced today, it would be a draggy 2 hours plus, or worse, a seven-hour streaming show, but at 100 minutes, the director, Sidney Lumet, keeps the action flying by. Recommended. [Criterion Channel]