Waste of time

Very best movie i ever watch

It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

Anyone expecting another rift on the Bonnie & Clyde legend are encouraged to look elsewhere. This Robert Altman film, based on the classic novel previously filmed as THEY LIVE BY NIGHT, is in a class (and genre) all its own. Bank robber Keith Carradine, along with two other cons, escapes from prison & finds refuge at the seedy gas station of Tom Skerritt. The three begin to rob more banks (rarely seen in action) until fate splits them up. Carradine ends up on the lam with Shelley Duvall, a bumpkin who seems to know nothing except movie magazines & Coca-Cola. Part love story, part bleak expose of life in the American south during the depression, Altman's film is wildly entertaining. There's bleakness mixed with a lot of comic moments. Carradine and Duvall excel in their roles and the supporting cast features many from Altman's "repertoire" including Skerritt, John Schuck, Bert Remsen and Louise Fletcher.

When watching Thieves Like Us, one will almost certainly get the feeling of deja vu in thinking back to the classic 1967 American film Bonnie and Clyde. Indeed, Altman's film owes a bit of gratitude to that picture as its success opened up the door for films like this to be made throughout the early 1970s. While some may claim Altman simply copied the successful formula of Bonnie and Clyde in adapting Edward Anderson's novel, I think the deft touch of Altman's style is pervasively present.In nearly all of Altman's films, the characters and their quirky individual idiosyncrasies are far more important than plot and exposition. This is especially true here as we come to really know and understand who these trio of thieves and their compatriots are while all but predicting exactly what will happen next. Altman could care less what happens to them and neither do we. What is more important is how they react. The acting is very helpful in this department, particularly with the leads of Keith Carradine and Shelley Duvall as Bowie and Keechie, who fall in love yet cannot seem to simply escape from the world in which they are trapped in.The supporting cast is also very good, particularly Louise Fletcher and Burt Remsen, but Altman's direction really steals the show as the most memorable part. He hardly ever uses close-ups, daring to get us to connect with these characters as we watch them commit robberies and shoot up the south. He also continues his progression in the sound editing department, using the radio as a thematic link for the whole film. Like the overhead announcement horns in MASH, the various programs and people heard on the radio give a different emotional and visual impact to what is happening in the scene (For example, when Bowie and Keechie first come together intimately, Romeo and Juliet plays over the radio).The only criticism I have of this film is that it too closely parallels that of Bonnie and Clyde, a much better and more engaging and challenging film. The originality isn't in the story but the characters; Altman's characters can't be found in practically any other type of movie. They are unique to his style and substance and soon you realize that is how it should be for it wouldn't work under anyone else.

Lackadaisically effective remake of Nick Ray's "They Live By Night", a handsome 1950s film noir where the characters, although played by some terrific actors, always seem ready to break into song, this is to that film what "The Long Goodbye" is to "The Maltese Falcon"... turning slow-burn cool into an idle handed, haltingly-paced, shaggy Devil's playground. Keith Carradine turns in a flighty, dazed, yet realistically down-home performance as the boyish escaped-convict sandwiched between two older, and in some ways, more experienced criminals. It would be hard to take the two side baddies, played by John Schuck and Bert Remsen, very seriously if they were cast as tough guys in a tough guy film to begin with. All three are desperate, pathetic losers who rob banks for a quick buck - one of them, Schuck, happens to be quite dangerous when cornered. The dialog between the trio are like grownup kids stuck in an endless detention class (i.e. prison). And Shelley Duvall's moll, unlike the first film's beauty (played by an actress who's more gorgeous than corn-fed/homely), is really a side character, used prominently in the second half after Carradine's injured in a car wreck. And while their chemistry lacks the instantly-driven-spark of the original, it's nice to have the romantic aspect - more accidental than staged - tucked in the backseat where (I feel) it belongs. But the most effective element isn't the acting, or Robert Altman's ever-gliding camera-work, but the radio programs, like "The Shadow", playing in the background throughout, providing a subliminal narration dictating events such as the crooks robbing their banks - which we only see from the outside two out of three times - or the programs running during the downtime, between bank jobs; all these scenes which can seem quite boring to anyone expecting an actual gangster film, but is what, in my opinion, makes this anti-gangster picture click. And is why I prefer it to the original. Beautifully-shot melodrama is replaced with an uncontrived, purposely sloth-toed tale about what (unconventionally-cast) criminals do when they're not doing bad things. And Louise Fletcher, as Remsen's relative who allows the men to stay in her house, gives a subtly-sly performance you have to watch a few times before fully realizing she's more than just filler.

Back to the 30's, folks. I was there, I know. It wasn't that you saw Coke everywhere, it was the only soft drink you saw. There were no machines with a choice. There was a big red Coke cooler sitting at the service station, another outside the grocery. Some of them were serviced by the local ice company, that is; no motor, just ice. A lot of times they had a padlock on them, in other places you just lifted the lid, helped yourself and left your nickel. Later they graduated to some with slots where you could put your nickel. No point in showing people in this movie drinking anything else, except maybe iced tea. No one else had the coolers, and so all you saw was Coke. Add to that the amount of fountain coke we drank. And it took Robert Altman to make us all think about it.