Director: Don Siegel
Starring: Walter Matthau, Joe Don Baker, Felicia Farr, Andrew Robinson, Sheree North, Norman Fell, Benson Fong
A superb review by Matthew Kitsell.
A fan’s appreciation of a great, forgotten ‘70s thriller
Welcome to Tres Cruces, New Mexico. Tres Cruces is a small, rural American town in which nothing much happens. Right now, Tres Cruces is waking up to another calm, untroubled day: cattle are grazing in a field; a little boy comically tries to saddle a horse that towers over him; a precocious female temptress starts mowing the lawn (Lalo Schifrin’s musical score playfully counterpoints these ordinary glimpses of country life). We could be watching the start of a sweet, gentle comedy-drama about kids growing up in small town America. The whole mood then changes completely. Lalo Schifrin’s score suddenly strikes an ominous note as the sign ‘’Bank of Tres Cruces” fills the screen. In a masterful shot, the camera cranes back to reveal a yellow Continental rumbling menacingly towards the front of the bank, while the credit “Produced and Directed by Don Siegel” appears on the screen. Instantly, we become suspicious of the occupants of the car, a crotchety old man and his seemingly long-suffering daughter, and with good reason. There’s something definitely wrong about these two: they’re parked in a ‘no parking’ area, and the cops parked nearby are already getting suspicious…
Charley Varrick, released in 1973, falls into a small cluster of smart, tough, no-frills caper movies from the early ‘70s, keeping company with similar films such as Peckinpah’s ‘The Getaway’, Cimino’s ‘Thunderbolt and Lightfoot’ and John Flynn’s tragically under seen mob movie ‘The Outfit’. Siegel’s directorial style though was never as angrily confrontational as Peckinpah’s, nor as oppressively grungy as the underrated John Flynn’s. ‘Charley Varrick’ also lacks the whimsical, poetic quality of Cimino’s wonderful debut. Watching Siegel’s films today, it seems that his film making philosophy was simply to allow the story to tell itself, and not to waste a foot of film doing so. Every time I am confronted with yet another over-edited, over-complex, over-paced, over-long, over-egged modern American thriller, I seriously regret the fact that there are no more Don Siegel movies being made.
I first saw Charley Varrick when I was 16. ITV had clearly deemed it an important enough film to dump it into its 4.00 in the morning slot, in between some migraine inducing Grace Jones videos. Siegel, no doubt, would have snorted with derision. To be honest, I didn’t completely get it first time around and was somewhat disappointed that Siegel’s follow-up to Dirty Harry lacked that film’s plethora of expertly-staged action sequences. However, what seemed like weaknesses then now seem like the movie’s great strengths now; much of the fun in Charley Varrick lies in piecing together its witty, insidious plot. Despite containing two bone-crunching action sequences (the excitingly staged bank robbery right at the beginning and a chase involving a bi-plane right at the end), there is very little action to speak of in Charley Varrick. Charley himself is no action hero. He is dangerous because he is able to turn the venality of the world back in on itself, and to his advantage.
Not wishing to give too much away, and for the benefit for those who are not familiar with it, the plot of the film is thus: Charley Varrick is a crop-duster-turned-bank-robber, who has been knocking over small banks (for small pickings) with his wife Nadine ever since the big corporations moved in and started making life difficult for sole traders like himself. Despite his apparently excellent track record in this field, however, Charley’s run of good luck is brought to a sickening halt when he realizes, following his successful robbery at Tres Cruces, that he has just robbed the Mafia of millions of dollars. Giving it back will mean getting killed. Trying to run away with it will mean probably getting killed. So Charley has to get creative. But creativity is Charley’s genius…
The plot of Charley Varrick could easily have been lifted from a black and white American film noir from the ‘40s or ‘50s, all cityscapes smothered in dark shadows. Interestingly however, the drama here plays out in brilliant noon sunshine, far away from the big cities, among beautifully tranquil rolling fields and desert, beautifully captured by DP Michael Butler. Everything is out in the open (Las Vegas makes one, extremely brief, cameo appearance). The film never becomes outrageously violent or bloody. More to the point, Siegel presents us with a bleak world full of hustlers, hookers and two-time losers, all of them on the take. Villainy runs through the American way of life from the upper levels of society to the bottom: organised crime operates out of bland, ultra-modern offices with meeting rooms and a sexy female photographer knocks out bent passport photos from her dingy apartment. Siegel takes this bleak worldview and finds plenty of black humour in it, though, especially during a scene in which Charley chats to his elderly neighbour at the mobile home development in which he lives, a nosey old lady who regularly fantasises about rape.
The casting of Walter Matthau as Charley was inspired. Usually seen as a comic actor, Matthau’s craggy face always manages to suggest a ruthless intelligence at work. He never plays the more comic scenes for laughs, often getting the humour across in a flicker of a glance. He is completely convincing as a cold, calculating professional. Upon discovering that he has probably just robbed the Mafia, he simply looks momentarily concerned. It is tempting to imagine Eastwood in the role, given that he was at this point Siegel’s regular leading man, but it is hard to imagine it working as well. Eastwood characters of this period tend to be loners with a talent for violent action. Charley is a different animal entirely. He is married and not violent by nature. His wits are his weapons.
Charley’s main nemesis is Molly, a surly, sneering brute with orders to rub Charley out. He is played by the great Joe Don Baker, who somehow manages to avoid all the usual bad-guy clichés. His Molly is actually reasonably courteous on occasion and at one point can be seen driving along singing a daft nursery rhyme to himself. It is fun to see Andy Robinson turning up for Siegel again, as Harman Sullivan, Charley’s cocky accomplice. Harman talks big and wants to spend the money quickly, marking him out in Charley’s eyes as something of a liability. His portrayal here of a more youthful, cowardly sort of villain is reminiscent of his much more intense portrayal of the twisted Scorpio in Dirty Harry. Like in that earlier film, he is awarded a scene in which he is horribly beaten up, allowing this actor to play to his strengths and deliver another impressive portrait of jittery terror. Even when this actor manages to go somewhat over the top (as he does a bit here), he’s always great fun to watch.
Charley Varrick is not a perfect film. For one thing, it is extremely doubtful that Charley’s thorough, meticulous planning would map out exactly the way he had intended. Could he be so certain that his plan would go without a hitch? It’s a minor criticism, but the plot is so delicately poised that more complications may have made the whole thing unnecessarily convoluted. More damaging is the inclusion of Felicca Farr (third billed, though she is only on screen for about five minutes in total) as a highly placed PA to John Vernon’s slimy mafia lieutenant, who falls for Charley’s charms towards the end of the film and sleeps with him. Why she would do this is completely inexplicable, but more worrying is the suspicion that this whole superfluous subplot appears to have been included as an in-joke between the director and his star. Felicca Farr was Jack Lemmon’s wife, Lemmon of course being Matthau’s on screen partner for many films. In-jokes are fine in small doses, but if they are shoehorned in to create a cumbersome, clunky subplot, then something must definitely be wrong. Finally, the character of Charley does not quite add up. We are given his back-story, but it is a little baffling that he would turn into a professional criminal simply through economic circumstances, unless he has a criminal background that we are not informed about.
Lalo Schrifrin delivers another excellent, atmospheric score for Siegel. His score here is less jazzy than his score for Dirty Harry, relying more on ambient sounds for its effectiveness. At times it almost seems as if the musical accompaniment is being generated from the landscape itself.
Charley Varrick was not a hit. Walter Matthau disowned it later on, claiming not to have understood any of it. Siegel treated it with indifference after Universal forced him to change the film’s title (it was originally to be called ‘The Last of the Independents’, adapted from a novel called ‘The Looters’ by John Reese). As a result, Charley Varrick remains seemingly stuck forever in the shadow of its burlier, brasher bigger brother, ‘Dirty Harry’. This is regrettable as, taken on its own terms, it is nearly as good as Dirty Harry (which is arguably the Director’s masterpiece) and is certainly one of his most purely enjoyable thrillers of the ‘70s. Even today, it is rarely shown on TV and has had to make do with a very functional DVD release (though we can at least be grateful that the film can be enjoyed in its correct aspect ratio). The last time I can remember seeing it on TV was on a Saturday evening on BBC2, playing as part of a season of classic ‘70s thrillers introduced by Mark Kermode. It was reassuring that the film was being championed again. It was, at least, an improvement from being dumped in the graveyard slot at 4.00 in the morning.
Good old Varrick.
