THE ANDERSON TAPES

Based on the bestselling novel by thriller writer Lawrence Sanders, Sidney Lumet's THE ANDERSON TAPES (1971), is a slick-as-a-whistle, first rate, New York City set crime film, a viable sub-genre of films that dominated the cinematic landscape of the 1970s. 

Sean Connery, anxious to avoid typecasting and shed his image as British super spy James Bond, stars as veteran criminal Duke Anderson. Freshly released from prison, Duke is already busy plotting his next caper and it's a doozy. He plans to rob all of the units of a swank New York City apartment building, a structure in which his girlfriend Ingrid (the smoking hot Dyan Cannon), resides as a kept woman. 

Of course, Anderson will need a team to execute the heist. He recruits Tommy Haskins, a gay antiques dealer (Martin Balsam in a terrific against-type performance), young ex-con The Kid (Christopher Walken in his first film role, and getaway driver Edward Spencer (Dick Anthony Williams). For old times sake, Anderson includes Pop (Stan Gottlieb), another ex-con, as lookout. 

But Anderson's caper is financed by mob boss Pat Angelo (Alan King, in another bit of offbeat casting) who insists that Anderson include loose cannon muscle man Socks Parelli (Val Avery), a goon that Anderson has orders to kill during the robbery. 

The second half of the film follows the crime itself but at various points in the narrative, Lumet flashes forward to the aftermath of the robbery, feeding us bits and pieces of information from the point of view of various robbery victims and making us wonder, who the guy on the stretcher (seen in numerous scenes) is. 

The police get wind of the robbery while it's in progress and launch a SWAT team assault on the building. The commander of the SWAT team is Captain Delaney (Ralph Meeker, playing his part broadly and for laughs) and a very young Garret Morris as patrolman Everson. 

Throughout the film, Lumet shows us various police and federal agencies that have all of the various players in the drama under constant surveillance through cameras, microphones and wire taps. Despite this constant monitoring by Big Brother, all of the data the various agencies have collected through the course of the film is ultimately worthless because it was all gained illegally. 

Filmed entirely on location in New York City and with a jazzy/electronic score by the great Quincy James, THE ANDERSON TAPES is a masterfully executed work by one of the greatest American filmmakers of the latter half of the twentieth century. 

Highly recommended.