Thieves Like Us Film Review

Director: Robert Altman

There's these three guys see, jail-breakers, and they hole up with various friends and relatives and rob banks. Each robbery is a little more hazardous than the last, and well, you can guess the finish.

It is always unfortunate when one can so reduce a movie, however, unwarranted such a reduction may be. Even more unfortunate if one can toss in a Depression setting and the old tragi-comedy complete with running jokes and lonely women.

In Thieves Like Us' Altman gains some success in his comments on the way such a plot is usually handled (Redford/Newman films and the like). The protagonists are not handsome or smart, their jokes aren't funny, their prospects never rise above the mediocre, and most damming of all, they have no style. Real people you might say. T-Dub, Chickadaw and Bowie consider the people who help them to be just that, and implicit in their definition is the belief that they too fall into category.

This question of justification and identity is a central theme in the movie, and is presented in a number of ways. T-Dub's sister-in-law Maddie is the classic case: the robbers see her as a hard-working honest woman who stands by her folks - what better virtue could a person have?

You just take those things for granted. And if you're living in a Depression and have never known any other way of life, well what else can a fella do but what he knows best? This rationale is never explicitly presented, precisely because it excludes that very basic question the three men do not want to ask themselves, namely: what are we doing for them? And because is is suppressed there is a general breakdown in communications all round.

Yet the robbers are more 'real' than some, for example there is a real pig of a prison captain who eats an enormous meal and wastes not a word nor a step if he can get someone else to do his work for him. His undeserved fate highlights the serious psychological side to the movie. Old partners T-Dub and Chicadaw have been shocked to read that their fellow escapee may only be a young country lad but he has commited murder. T-Dub forgets it but Chicadaw develops a grudge. Bowie is newly initiated to bank robbery but always manages to get more newspaper space - so Chicadaw turns to murder too.

His jealousy is compounded when T-Dub, who is both crippled and getting on in years, gets himself a girl. The final straw comes after Chicadaw is recaptured and brilliantly sprung from the prison farm by young Bowie. The prison captain is their hostage and - well, there's another easy guess.

It is to Altman's credit that he inserted the revolting prison captain into a scene whose major interest lies elsewhere, but in that Chicadaw's role as the chief plot developer is only marginally relevant to the real successes of the movie a fault exists.

Just what are these 'real successes?' Generally, it is the mood evoked. The film opens with a beautiful pan through the rain to the green Mississippi countryside. It rains a lot in this movie, and if you saw 'Images' you will know how superbly Altman uses this symbol. Cocacola and radio-thrillers (both as real programmes and as imagined accompaniment to the robberies) are delightfully sustained as motifs. The relationship of Bowie and his girl Keetcha is acutely real and together with the final blurred shots on a railway station provides easily the best scenes in every sense.

Bowie (Keith Carradine) and Keetcha (Shelly Duvall) are both ugly, both painfully shy, and both aware of some of the adult responsibilities which await them.

They act out the ritual of getting to know each other, with Bowie trying to show off a bit and failing miserably, and Keetcha trying to be coy and failing likewise.

When Bowie is wounded Keetcha looks after him and they fall in 'love' Bowie adopts the manner of any loving husband but cannot reconcile his obligations to his friends with his new-found 'happiness'

Keetcha is a fine housewife but doesn't know why she keeps feeling so sick.

Their pretentions to grandeur - being a bank robber, being a loving couple, having a baby - are the very essence of pathos. If you can cry over 'Love Story' or 'Romeo and Juliet' it is because the romantic medium enables you; Bowie and Keetcha are too real, too amusing, and too sad.

I wasn't overly impressed when I saw this movie, but the more I think about it, the more I like it. Thieves Liks Us' is an interesting combination of elements from earlier Altman works, but because the humour is less grim and more indirect than in 'M*A*S*H', and the atmosphere calmer than in 'Images', one tends to get a weaker impression.

Yet Altman's ability to intangibly infect his movies is as strong and constant as ever and makes Thieves Like Us' well worth seeing. He is one of the few directors who can create a mood which does not become depressing or lose its focal point while establishing a form which entirely supercedes a weak storyline.

The St. James is following this movie with The Long Goodbye', reputedly Altman's best yet. If it is that good you probably won't see a better film all year. He can do better than Thieves Like Us', but most directors generally do a lot worse.

Simon Wilson