Review of The Anderson Tapes (1971) by Trent R — 15 Mar 2009

Duke Anderson, a criminal mastermind assembles on either side of him a personally chosen crew of specialists, which results in a multi-cultural minority fest as befits the film's era, while also in keeping with the gender polarity of the classic heist picture, with the aim to pull off an audaciously challenging hold-up. Their plan constitutes costumes, deceiving electronic surveillance, split-second intervals, madcap stuntwork and pure, unadulterated audacity. And what you've got is one of my favorite genres, the heist film. Each one follows the compulsory narrative structure, from the enlisting of the colorful specialists to the ultimate racking capstone.

Sean Connery, looking devilishly anti-007 with symmetrically concrete black eyebrows and a tapering hairline, is Duke. He's an ex-safecracker who's just gotten out of prison. He rooms with his old love Dyan Cannon who lives in an aristocratic New York apartment building brimming to the balk with wealthy residents and priceless property. His plot is to back a moving van up to the building and plainly clean the place out.

Connery plays the one fully shaded character in the movie. In a heist film, the plot is usually too vital to be jeopardized by even the characters in it. But author Lawrence Sanders and adapting screenwriter Frank Pierson have smuggled in some occupation for the characters at any rate, fleshed out by Lumet's use of supporting actors who have a copious allotment of connotations for us. Martin Balsam is an effeminate antique dealer, and Alan King plays a Mafia underboss with a dry undertone. It was the first major motion picture for actor Christopher Walken.

Duke seeks to live a life of order and reason, sculpting out his own character, which he presents to the world as poised, disciplined and well-balanced. He has mastered the mental and social justification of his profession, which is to say he's learned to live with not having a justification. Or he hasn't. Really, he rants about being better than most social institutions which he explains as worse than thieves, but he knows that, for the most part, it's nonsense. Then comes the time to decide between the only thing he knows and balancing things up in his perspective. Life begins to need to fit into boxes for him, and for his crew, and for his girl, but as we objectively see from the very beginning, by which early time the film weighs the beacon of surveillance on modern times, accompanied by the lack of misalignment between government agencies, that is likely not to happen to his life.

This all drives tension hard and fast into the heist sequence in this film, which is not in dead silence as are such pivotal chapters of earlier heist films like Rififi, Le Cercle Rouge, Gambit, The Asphalt Jungle or Topkapi. Nor does it work alongside any predestined clockwork like The Killing, Bob Le Flambeur, Ocean's Eleven, Grand Slam, The Hot Rock or its sequel Bank Shot, however. No, it seems as if to betray the relentless expectation of Duke for it to work that way. There are so many unforeseen delays and chinks, and yet he persists.

What has always fascinated me about heist movies, though my main draw is the heist itself, is the ability of the filmmakers and actors to create illicit, thieving, socially destructive, sometimes even murderous characters for whom we have an obligatory sympathy. The Anderson Tapes is based on a novel by Lawrence Sanders, who wrote another excellent crime novel called Caper, so I feel familiar with Sanders' conventions when I watch this film in spite of being adapted for the screen. I think he is a renaissance man much in the way Duke fancies himself to be, and I think it's intentional of him to make us indecisive about our feelings for Duke when his robbery is in effect. Lumet's tongue-in-cheek tone, consummated by Quincy Jones's offbeat score, does not complement Duke's character arc as an idealist who has become exasperated with constant deliberation and becomes unrelenting in his plan no matter what he must do. But this is a clever technique, because we relate to Duke's betrayed uncertainty all the more because of it.