Anderson Tapes

Anderson Tapes

With the objective of executing an extraordinarily complex theft, a criminal genius brings together around him a team of highly skilled professionals. Their scheme calls for disguise, eluding electronic detection devices, split-second timing, daredevil acrobatics and sheer chutzpah.

What you have here is one of my favorite genres: the Big Heist movie, or as it’s known in some Eastern critical circles (but less colorfully) the Caper Flick. There have been dozens of them; no need to list them here. The point is that each follows the obligatory plot pattern, from recruitment to final agonizing climax (which is all the more exciting since it must occur in dead silence, with everybody padding about in sneakers).

Two new movies owe their structures to this genre: Gordon Parks’ “Shaft” (1971, which is also a detective movie) and Sidney Lumet’s “Anderson Tapes,” comfortably within the Caper tradition and very good indeed.

This time Sean Connery is the mastermind an ex-safecracker who has just gotten out of prison. He moves in with an old love (Dyan Cannon), who lives in a swank New York apartment building packed with rich tenants and valuable possessions. His plan is simple: Back a Mayflower van up to the building and strip it.

Connery plays the only completely developed character in this movie; In a Big Heist film, plot has priority over everything else and you can’t afford much excess characterization. But Lumet has sneaked in some anyway; he uses supporting actors who have a rich background of associations for us. Two of these are Martin Balsam (swishy antique dealer) and Alan King (Mafia chief so well played that you wonder how they left him out of “The Godfather”).

The movie’s only serious structural flaw involves electronic surveillance. The original novel was supposedly based on transcriptions from various public and private spies. That was a literary device, and too cute even for a bestseller. In the movie, it’s dead weight. We have to eavesdrop with too many private eyes and look over the shoulder of too many FBI agents, to no particular avail. Perhaps Lumet was simply too ambitious in trying to work anti-bugging sentiment into the film. If he’d thrown out all the hidden mikes and stuck with the Heist, “The Anderson Tapes” would have moved closer to “Rififi.”

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