Customer Reviews

The Anderson Tapes [Region 2]

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The Anderson Tapes conspicuously mentioned in this film's title are very peripheral to the film's plot. Instead we have a brilliant `caper film' set in a New York City townhouse in early 1971. The images are still memorable of a balding Sean Connery as the leader and brains behind the heist. And who can forget that stoic and peculiar looking member of Connery's team, Christopher Walken in his first film. What an impression he made. This film still looks current even today. This is a real suspenseful film full of great characterizations. A good one!

Sean Connery turns in an excellent and memorable performance in this excellent thriller competently acted, well scripted and neatly directed about a heist where everything is not what it appears to be. This film is full of great characters and suspense. Quincy Jones composed a great score. Look for Christopher Walken's distinctive face in his film debut. It will keep you on the edge of your seat.

As thriller,"Anderson Tapes"is average. However as theater - an ensemble piece - it's an American classic. Sean's best role: a likeable guy out of jail after staying quiet for ten years on behalf of the mob. They owe him a favor (small potatoes)which is the problem (they now prefer big business - linen service, construction, etc.). Ultimately they stake Connery and his magnificent raggedy crew to pull a major burglary (Sean's retirement). Meanwhile the FBI (in search of bigger fish) monitors Connery's ensuing bad luck like an indifferent god.

The Anderson Tapes is an example of what director Sidney Lumet is capable of creating: an entertaining yet somehow thoughtful film. This was the movie that actually made me appreciate Sean Connery. In the Bond films he was doomed to be typecast. Sidney Lumet bailed him out and Connery owes him big time. Great setup and cameos: including an underrated scene with the great Garret Morris as a limber police officer, who would go on to become one of the original Not Ready for Prime Time Players on Saturday Night Live just a few years later (along with Belushi, Chase, Radner, etc.). Christopher Walken looks like a baby in this one and Martin Balsam is pretty funny. Nice flash forward scenes make it seem like it can never be a dated film. Chilling last scene makes the film and a point about our technological age.

Great flick. Fast paced armed robbery thriller driven by an ultra funky Quincy Jones soundtrack. Excellent direction, and an all star cast make this movie a great choice. I believe this was even Christopher Walken's first film. Sidney Lumet's style is unmatched as the fast paced editing follows the excellent soundtrack. Onoe of the best films ever made in my opinion.

Director Sidney Lumet is impeccable in handling any type of material. What should have been a routine caper film in the hands of Lumet's masterful direction and scenarist Frank Pierson (Oscar for "Dog Day Afternoon" turns into something transcendant. Lumet isn't so much concerned with the caper because it's pretty routine and it's a foregone conclusion how it's going to go down. What distinguishes the film is the terrific dark comedy and great characters. What can you say about a movie whose cast includes everyone from Margaret Hamilton ("The Wizard of Oz") to Garrett Morris("Saturday Night Live")? I particularly liked the work of Judith Lowry whose claim to fame was playing brassy grannies on Seventies sitcoms and plays a similar character here to great effect. Sean Connery is ostensible star but basically his job is to be ringmaster to the circus environment. A real gem and a feather in the cap for director Lumet.

I saw this film about Five times in the movies when it at last made it to TV in 1973 it lost a lot since NBC had to cut most of the good stuff, remember this was before we had Censorship free services like HBO and Showtime. Like most people I'm sure, I hated the ending.
The bank where Duke opens a account was one of my companies' branches, (Irving Trust Co where I worked on Wall St as a mainframe computer operator) the one on Third Ave. There was a photo in our employee magazine [...] If you read the story it says something about Bank robbery, which we know now was not the case.
Sure took a while to make it to DVD.

I've watched this flick no less than 20 times in my life and just love the way Sidney Lumet directed this killer cast and captured New York in the 70's along with the jazz of Quincy Jones' soundtrack... it's just a hip flick! The surveillance and paranoia of the "tapes" is indicative of the 70's Watergate scandal and captures that moment in time-- and still relevant on some levels today. I'm glad to see it finally came out on DVD... also recommend reading Lawrence Sanders original book which the movie was based on and Sanders' seminal style in rendering this Pulpish tale.

"The Anderson Tapes" is loaded with the sort of richness that you can count on when its director, Sidney Lumet is at the helm. Sean Connery heads up the sort of first-rate cast of character actors that routinely gravitate toward any Lumet film. There is the sprinkling of humor and the rising suspense that you might expect from a movie about a plot to commit a robbery. The director's masterful touch with pacing keeps the picture moving in a thoroughly engrossing fashion. Most of all, his gift for drawing intense and powerful performances from his casts is in full flower here. Screen the recent Lumet film, "Before the Devil Knows You're Dead" and you will see an even more intense and infinitely darker "caper-flick" that is, likewise, very worthwhile.

Sean really seems to relish his role as a tough-guy ex-con in this intense caper from the early 70s that holds up nicely. The conceit that everything we're seeing and hearing is culled from various surveillance tapes is a little distracting and doesn't quite work. But Lumet's brisk, no-nonsense take on the action when the heist goes live still delivers. Good NYC locations and Qunicy Jones jazzy score help. The punch card type of the credits and those awful "futuristic" sounding, echoing computer beeps on the soundtrack are what make the picture seem much more dated than it is. Plus Lumet's inclusion of more than a few gay caricatures.

It's fun to see Chris Walken's debut and Dyan is sensationally sexy. Only Alan King's irritating over-acting mars the cast.