Straight Time – Warner Bros.
1978 114 minutes. Rated R.
“Please God, don’t let him get caught!”
I debated whether or not to include a review featuring Dustin Hoffman. These days my feelings for him, amidst the recent allegations against him, caused me to reconsider this post. In fact, I debated whether or not to publish this review at all. Hoffman comes from another generation. A generation that lauded movies about white dude characters. The lack of characterization in its female characters bored me too. The women in this movie are peripheral, as in other movies of this trope. However, I still find myself gravitating towards some of these movies, despite this fact. Bechdel-fail aside, I ultimately opted to write it up because I have a thing for crime and action movies (I was raised by an elderly vet, what can I say), and my favorite entertainment spawns from the 70’s , 80’s, and 90’s. These days it’s easy to notice the above filmaking flaws when going back and viewing to old favorites. So this movie fails on all counts. I’m sorry. But if you are seeking a gritty 70’s style crime drama, and are not deterred by the above facts, AND the disappointing Dustin Hoffman stuff, it’s a fairly decent watch in terms of entertainment value and acting chops.
I found this movie a few years ago on Netflix. Israel “Ulu” Grosbard’s , Straight Time stars Dustin Hoffman as Max Dembo.Based on Edward Bunker’s novel, No Beast So Fierce (which I have yet to read), and featuring a satisfying array of very classic actors, Straight Time, though not an epic, is a solidly entertaining piece, with insightful character points. Overall, I was struck by the consistently great acting by all players, and with Hoffman’s performance in particular. Hoffman is always convincing and strong, so it’s crazy that the importance of his role in this movie seems to have gone as unnoticed as this mellow, unseen piece of work itself.
At first, Max (Hoffman) manages to keep out of trouble, and seems to have a sincere plan. He even secures a job from a local temp agency, where he meets the placid and accommodating Jenny Mercer (Theresa Russel). Jenny was VERY believable as a twenty-something bored-with-her-existence/lover of all men bad/heart first, head second type of female. I wasn’t sure if it was her easy demeanor and looks that sold me, or if her character was purposely meant to be this blasé to prove this, but convince it did, and (I cringed when I noticed this) I admittedly found myself identifying with her during these, sure you can crash at my place moments. She is helpful to Max, getting him his first working gig, agreeing to go on date, accepting his re-release and letting him stay with her and use her car; even leaving work. In any event, she plays this quasi-doormat lover role naturally, and all of these scenes worked well in foreshadowing what was eventually leading to a doomed-to-fail romance.
I started out immediately sympathizing with Max, who tries as hard as he might to live a normal life during his “straight time” i.e., initial re-entry to the outside. Released into an unfamiliar arena where he must now survive and maintain a “normal” lifestyle and exist as a law-abiding man, Max never seems to stand a chance. After doing what appears to be all the right things, and getting his life in order, he makes the mistake of visiting a heroin-abusing friend from his past, Will Darin (Gary Busey), whose wife Selma is suspicious and direct in her disapproval of the two men’s newly sparked chumminess, given their past behavior. All it takes is one rascally visit by Will to Max’s room, and a follow-up/surprise visit by the sadistic parole officer Earl (M. Emmett Walsh), whose condescending attempts to monitor him finally pay off upon his unfortunate discovery of a used matchstick, thoughtlessly left by Will to cook his heroin in Max’s room the night before. Earl abhors the archetypal petty criminal he makes his living keeping in line; and keep Max he does. Earl’s continuous control and power after he arrests Max for drugs and throws him back in jail, erode Max’s genuine attempt at constructing a good life for himself.
The degradation he endures after this incident, and Earl’s assertion that he will no longer be allowed to live as independently as before, cause Max to seek retaliation and escape. After making a run for it from his parole officer, Max falls back into his old habits. He meets another friend with a crooked past, Jerry Schue (who is played by one of my all-time favorite peripheral character actors, Harry Dean Stanton). Schue, now living in a repressed quiet state in the suburbs, is hungry as hell for some excitement.
While Jerry is initially excited by the propositions Max brings to him, these feelings soon shift to wariness, mainly in response to Max’s poor execution of his own criminal behavior. Max is impulsive and greedy; he is also careless. Hoffman nails this character down because he never seems to be acting. He IS Max. Though equally corrupt in criminal character, Jerry’s prudence in timing each crime and getting the hell out of there, accentuates the opposite nature of Max’s stormy impulses and his almost self-destructive nature.
This is particularly obvious during the robbery plotting scene, and during the robbery itself. Max irritates the more professional Jerry after he invites the ill-experienced Will to join their plan without consulting him. Also frustrating to Jerry are Max’s actions during the actual robbery, when he refuses to follow the planned exit protocol, and gets greedy, holding them up longer than he and Jerry originally planned. Interestingly, we get to see how Max acts as a criminal; he is not very good at it, at least this time around, and what follows is an unsuccessful plan that produces no real winners.
Straight Time is a movie about criminality and the individual. Every person Max comes in contact with as a thief is expendable to him when he is living his life as a criminal. This is a lifestyle, we see, that is not easily transformable after being institutionalized in prison. The straight path is a dark one for Max. One poorly lit, and which he is never allowed to navigate successfully with any real sense of freedom, trust, or humility. This does not lead him to discover a potentially free lifestyle for himself. Earl’s dehumanization of him in his already vulnerable and overwhelmingly free state, reinforces his self-perception as once a prisoner, always such.
I found myself referencing Shawshank Redemption in comparison to Straight Time, and Morgan Freeman’s quote “These walls are funny. First you hate ‘em, then you get used to ‘em. Enough time passes, you get so you depend on them. That’s institutionalized.” Shawshank differs in that it has a different main character (an innocent man) who is not a lifetime criminal, it is a Hollywood movie that appeals to everyone (Straight Time is a bit grainier/cultish); the character’s have more dimension and wisdom (Morgan Freeman’s self-reflective narration for instance); and the plot progression carries smoothly and sensibly; overall, it is a richer movie experience.
What makes this film a solid movie is its realism, re-watchability, tragic anti-hero (not as noble or bright as Shawshank’s admirable Andy), a believable supporting cast depicting the truth involved in living each of their own meandering lifestyles, and in its depiction of a free man on the run, all over again, seemingly waiting to get caught.
