Someone is listening. Someone is watching.
Add in, “He knows when you’re awake,” and the trailer for Sidney Lumet’s The Anderson Tapes could be talking about Santa Claus. As it is, the trailer is actually referring to the police and other government agencies that are all shown embracing wire taps in this movie. It’s like there was a sale at the wire tape store and no one wanted to miss out. Everyone is bugged but no one is working together so the footage collected can actually do some good.
On the one hand, it feels like the film is being overly generous, in terms of portraying police efficiency and showing these organizations having enough manpower to keep tabs on so many people, but there’s a flip side to that narrative, too, which is revealed towards the end.
The Anderson Tapes begins with Duke Anderson (Sean Connery) being released from prison. If times have changed in the ten years that he’s been away, Duke doesn’t act like it, and that’s one of the reasons The Anderson Tapes is so good.
Yes, on the outside, The Anderson Tapes is obsessed with technology. The typeface for the opening credits (which film historian, Glenn Kenny, identifies as Data 70 in his commentary) is a very old school, computer font and (especially in the beginning) Quincy Jones’ score incorporates a lot of electronic sounds that just sound grating and over the top. Like if The Anderson Tapes were a sci-movie, then these sounds wouldn’t feel out of place but, it’s not, and luckily they’re dialed down after a while because viewers might’ve reached their limit otherwise.
If these sounds are supposed to intimidate Duke and make him feel out of touch, though, they don’t (or at least it doesn’t show if they do) and it’s that misplaced confidence that makes Duke a pleasure to watch, even as his caper seems destined to fail.
There’s nothing about Duke’s heist, after all, that makes much sense in the end. Even the gangsters who finance it do so knowing the payoff won’t be enough. The only person who doesn’t seem to realize his plan is doomed is Duke but he’s enabled to go ahead anyway and try robbing every room in the apartment building where his girlfriend, Ingrid (Dyan Cannon), lives.
Frank Pierson (who later wrote the screenplay for Lumet’s Dog Day Afternoon) adapted Lawrence Sanderson’s novel for the big screen here and it’s the perfect-imperfect character-driven crime thriller. The film doesn’t really get into the psychology of why Duke is so eager to jump back into a life of crime but Christopher Walken makes his feature film debut as one of Duke’s prison mates who gets enlisted to help with the heist.
As Kenny goes over in his commentary, Lumet loved actors and if ever there was a film that embodied the saying “there are no small parts,” it’s this one. Immediately after The Anderson Tapes I watched Robert Aldrich’s The Dirty Dozen and what struck me is how much of a better job Lumet does in his film at making you care about every single character who appears on screen, even if they’re only in one scene (by comparison, members of the titular dozen would be killed in The Dirty Dozen and I wouldn’t know who they were, outside of the bigger named stars).Truly, though — parts that would be bit roles in any other film are scene stealing here, like all of the residents that Duke and his gang end up robbing and who are only introduced once the heist is underway, or Cannon’s girlfriend role, which could be thankless and instead you get her breaking up with her sugar daddy (Richard B. Shull) over the phone and thinking that it won’t effect her living arrangements.
As Kenny points out, too, these scenes aren’t necessary. You don’t need to see Pat (Alan King), the gangster, talking to his father (Frank Macetta) (who it turns out isn’t really in charge anymore but Pat is letting it seem that way). He’s a character who doesn’t need to make an impression but Lumet, Pierson, and King ensure that he does, and the film is better for all that texture.
The Anderson Tapes is available on Blu-ray from Kino Lorber.
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