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"You ready to do some honest thievin'?" Bacon's Larceny, Inc. is a solid foundation, the opening butcher-shop heist has Boston goons dipped in goblet tanks and bombarded with chicken feathers. The safecracker (Peter Falk) is a stumblebum in a baggy overcoat, he gets out of jail and immediately catches up with the comic-book issues he missed. Petty capers in between servings of boot stew at the diner, hitting Brink's is the dream, thus the ex-con's enchanted sight of a screenful of armored cars. It's "guarded like the King of England," warns the missus (Gena Rowlands), in reality it's a stingy operation with a security guard who locks himself in the bathroom with the sports session. The robbery crew includes shifty fence (Peter Boyle), dense brother-in-law (Allen Garfield), dapper bookie (Paul Sorvino), and "Underwater Demolition Team" veteran (Warren Oates). "We've been put on this earth to be double-crossed." A pleasingly jocular treatment of William Friedkin themes, like the antic figures from The Night They Raided Minsky's grounded by the grime of The French Connection. "The crime of the century" to the FBI, to the participants an abrupt farce when one of the mugs can't quite resist a "Do not open door" sign and floods the place with gumballs. (Sheldon Leonard's J. Edgar Hoover has his own cracked interpretation: "This robbery could be the missing link between the Communists and organized crime.") From the roll of toilet paper used to spot tripwires to the ragged hanger that must replace a screwdriver in bypassing a pesky padlock, the details are to be savored. The punchline of the unresolved case returns in Cruising, and the screwball lineage continues with Cassavetes' Big Trouble, Malle's Crackers, Allen's Small Time Crooks... With Gerard Murphy, Kevin O'Connor, Claudia Peluso, Patrick Hines, Malachy McCourt, and Robert Prosky.
--- Fernando F. Croce |