Thieves Like Us

1974 crime movie

Rating: 16/20

Plot: Bowie, Chicamaw, and T-Dub escape from prison and team up to become a bank-robbing team. While hiding out in a gas station, young Bowie falls for the owner's daughter who may or may not be Popeye's girlfriend. I'll have to check the timeline to verify that one. The life of crime puts a strain on their relationship.

In the last week, I've seen both Keith and David Carradine without shirts, both at the height of their pectoral powers. With a little research, I can probably see Robert Carradine's nipples, too, and complete what might be the first ever Carradine Nipple Trifecta. It'll be a first for this blog anyway.

Also, I got the opportunity to see Shelley Duvall naked. If I remember correctly (this could just be a delusion or fantasy on my part), she's also naked in Altman's 3 Women. I told my brother, a guy who I remember describing Shelley Duvall as "hot," and he emailed, "What was it like?" It's actually exactly like you'd imagine it to be.

This is one of those less-busy Altman movies with a focus on a lot less characters. Really, it's a focus on two naive souls and this impossible little romance that develops in the middle of this bank-robbing crime spree. It's a quiet, reflective movie, and the cinematography perfectly captures this long-gone Great Depression-era Americana. It's gorgeous and it's dusty, and it's got one of the things I really like about Altman--that ability to show this quiet little moment and make it feel like it's an important memory that came right from your own head. Also contributing to the period flavor is a lack of movie soundtrack. With this, you get all crackly diegetic music, mostly from radio seriels. Add some creaky rocking chairs and footsteps on a wooden floor and you've got a setting that is as quiet as the 1930s in the middle of all that dust. Even the robbery scenes, all but one at least, are quiet. Most of them are shot in a way so that the action can't even be seen. I think it's Altman trying to be funny. Altman's wry humor is all over this otherwise serious crime story actually. It's seen in the ineptitude of the titular thieves, especially during a "drawing straws" scene that I thought was hilarious but didn't laugh at. I was also amused at a robbing practice scene with a kid in blackface playing a porter. Carradine is good as this naive kid in way over his head, and the other two-thirds of the robbing trio--John Schuck and Burt Remsen--are perfectly cast. And I really do like Shelley Duvall who I always think is underrated as an actress.