Max is released from Folsom Prison after
completing a six-year incarceration for burglary. Despite being mild-mannered,
we sense that there is something brooding beneath the surface just waiting to
erupt out of control. (Actor Jason Isaacs portrayed Irish mobster Michael
Caffee in the Showtime series Brotherhood from 2006 to 2008 who returns
home following a jail stint with a similar disposition.) Max makes the six-plus-hour
bus ride down to Los Angeles and he gets his first taste of life outside of
prison when he calls and leaves his parole officer Earl Frank (M. Emmet Walsh)
a message that Earl says he didn’t get when Max meets him the following day.
They get off on the wrong foot when he makes the mistake of not going to a
halfway house, rubbing Earl the wrong way. The conditions of his parole are
that he is to discuss all his intentions with Earl first. After getting a room
at the Garland Hotel for the week, he tries out for a typing job at the
Wilshire Agency. Under the eye of Jenny Mercer (Theresa Russell), we see that
Max has a problem with rules as he continues typing long after Jenny calls
“time†on the test. Despite this and his revelation of his past, she agrees to
date him. Max looks up a former convict, Willy Darin (Garey Busey just before
his breakout role in the Oscar-winning The Buddy Holly Story), at Willy’s
house in the Echo Park suburb of Los Angeles. Willy’s wife Selma (an
unrecognizable Kathy Bates) is less-than pleased at their reunion and confides
her trepidation to Max who, although visibly hurt, leaves the house. The look
he gives her on his way out is one of a wronged man who doesn’t forget. Yes,
that’s Gary Busey’s real-life son, then-credited as Jacob, playing his onscreen
son Henry. Again, Max abides by his own rules, and it costs him when Willy
shoots up heroin in his room and leaves behind evidence that Earl discovers
when he visits Max unannounced, costing him time back in L.A. County jail for a
week. When Earl springs Max, he asks him the identity of the person who shot up
in his room. Max flips out and steals Earl’s car, leaving him hanging half
naked against a freeway divider fence. Max is now back to his old ways, pulling
petty hold-ups to make ends meet while looking for shotguns and semi-automatic
pistols.
Straight
Time began life as No Beast So Fierce,
an intriguingly titled 1973 novel written by the late paroled and convicted
felon Edward Heward Bunker, who would go on to achieve a modicum of success in
Hollywood by appearing in Steve DeJarnett’s Miracle Mile (1988) and
Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs (1992) among other films. Reportedly,
Mr. Hoffman began directing the film himself before handing over the reins to
veteran director Ulu Grosbard whom he worked with previously on Who is Harry
Kellerman and Why is He Saying Those Terrible Things About Me? in 1971 so
that he could focus on playing Max. Mr. Bunker appears briefly in the film, and
the plot is bolstered by the always excellent Harry Dean Stanton as Jerry, an
ex-con who, like Willy, is also bored by his legit profession and wants to get
back into the game and do jobs with Max. The trouble with Max is, he’s reckless
and takes unnecessary risks, allowing his temper to get the better of him. He
wants the bigger scores and when he and Jerry rob a prominent bank in broad
daylight, he goes way beyond the time at which he should leave, narrowly escaping.
Things go awry when his hunger for more money gets them into big trouble
following a jewelry store that he scoped out earlier with an unassuming Jenny who
thinks he is buying her an expensive watch.
Straight
Time raises a lot of questions: Why does
Jenny, an attractive woman, get involved with Max? Why do Max and Jerry take
scores with no masks on? Is The System really trying to help ex-convicts assimilate
back into a free society, or is it simply there to give the impression of
attempting to handle ex-convicts as they try to get back on their feet? Do we
sympathize with Max for a life of crime? Is a life of crime better than working
for The Man? Who is responsible for the recidivism rate among paroled convicts?
If the film seems familiar in how it handles the issue of thievery, it might
not come as a surprise that writer and director Michael Mann did some
uncredited work on the screenplay. His films Thief (1981), L.A.
Takedown (1989) and Heat (1995) are all examinations on thieves and
the way they live their lives, especially how the rush of stealing is what they
find exciting. Tom Sizemore said it best in Heat: “For me, the action
is the juice.â€
It
would be another six years before premium cable viewers would have an
opportunity to see the film; four years after that my visit to the new
Blockbuster Video in an adjacent town made me giddy with delight as the aisles
were filled with VHS copies of movies that I knew of yet never saw before. Max
Dembo beckoned me from the cover of the oversized Warner Home Video clamshell
box for Straight Time, his large sad eyes asking me to rent it and give
it a chance, which I did and did not regret in the slightest.
Straight
Time was released on DVD by Warner Home
Video in May 2007 with a much-needed upgrade from the old VHS transfer. It’s
now available on Blu-ray through their Warner Archive line and it looks even
better. I appreciate Warner Archive retaining the original black and red “A
Warner Communications Company†logo from the period. This edition carries over
the audio commentary track featuring director Grosbard and star Hoffman who
both give wonderful anecdotes about the making and history of the film. The
aforementioned trailer is also included. It’s marvelous hearing Mr. Hoffman
talk about this film, as it reminds me of the excellent commentary that Jack
Nicholson provided to Michelangelo Antonioni’s The Passenger (1975),
arguably the actor’s greatest film.
Cinematographer
Owen Roizman, already a veteran of some great New York-lensed films such as
William Friedkin’s The French Connection (1971), Joseph Sargent’s The
Taking of Pelham 123 (1974), Sidney Pollack’s Three Days of the Condor
(1975) and Sidney Lumet’s Network (1976), brings his characteristic
visual genius to the Hollywood and Wilshire Boulevard streets of Los Angeles
and makes the city another character, with close-ups of Montgomery Ward and
Woolworths, their signage stylized in long-gone and forgotten fonts.
Composer
David Shire provides a wonderfully catchy minimalist score that I would love to
see released on compact disc (remember those?).
Ironically,
Dustin Hoffman and his roommate, Gene Hackman, were both were voted least
likely to succeed in their Pasadena Playhouse classes when they first started
out. Hilarious.