Charley Varrick
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Movie Reviews of Charley Varrick
Movie Review: Walter Matthau's Charley Varrick is a bank robber to bet on. But avoid Joe Don Baker's Molly
Summary: 4 Stars
Says the man looking at the business card, "'Charley Varrick, Last of the Independents.' I like that. Has a ring of finality." The man is Molly, a mob enforcer for special projects. You don't want to let him into your trailer. Charley Varrick will meet him when the small-time robbery Charley sets up at the Tres Cruces branch of Western Fidelity Bank goes really, really wrong.
Varrick (Walter Matthau) expected to clear maybe $20,000 or $30,000 from the heist. Instead, his wife, Nadine, waiting in the getaway car, shoots two cops, gets shot herself, and one of Charley's two associates gets killed. Charley, finally back at the trailer park and now a widow, is left with young, dumb Harmon Sullivan (Andrew Robinson) and exactly $765,118 in two big bags. When a newscast reports that the bank manager says only $2,000 was stolen, Charley wishes he'd stayed with stunt flying and crop dusting. The bank was mob controlled and all that cash was about to be sent out of the country for a good washing. Charley knows the cops are after him; now he knows the mob will be, too. They'll want their money back. Just as important, they're going to want to set an example.
Charley Varrick, for all its length (nearly two hours) and for all the queasiness of a ragged Walter Matthau boxing the compass on a round bed with a well-built mob babe, is one fine movie. The plot is so ingenious, the script so smart, the direction so tight, that all the cast members, as good as they are, could be replaced except for Matthau and Joe Don Baker as Molly and not a beat would be skipped.
Charley Varrick the movie comes down to a contest between Charley's sly-like-a-fox, laconic ingenuity and Molly's brutally direct approach to making love, repossessing a car or solving problems. Molly is a big man with a bland face, a nice smile, and who has serious anti-social issues. He smiles, but expect the worst from him if you're a black, a woman, in a wheelchair or the object of his contract. Walter Matthau, with his sagging face, con man personality and his shrewdness, is the heart of the movie, but Joe Don Baker makes you flinch with dreadful anticipation every time Molly comes on screen. Without these two powerful actors, Charley Varrick would have been a clever, amusing heist-and-chase movie. With the two of them, Charley Varrick is a classic.
Charley Varrick, along with The Laughing Policeman (1973) and Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974) make up a sort of crime trifecta for Matthau. The Laughing Policeman is a good story although, in my opinion, it hasn't aged well. Pelham is just about as hard-edged as it was when it was released. Just as Charley Varrick benefits immensely from Joe Don Baker's Molly, Pelham benefits from Robert Shaw's utterly ruthless and dominating villain, code-named Blue.
Keep an eye out for William Schallert who plays Sheriff Bill Horton. I've always liked Schallert. He usually played smart and honorable guys, sometimes judges or doctors or just friends. He played a good friend of Walter Matthau's small town lawyer, Harmon Cobb, in the well-made TV mystery drama, Incident (1990). Cobb defends a German prisoner of war against a murder charge during WWII. It's an effective, tidy teleplay.
Many have commented on the nature of Universal's DVD release. It evidently was a cheap, get-it-out-the-door effort. The color transfer is not all that good. The wide-screen presentation is evidently chopped down from a pan-and-scan version, and if you're not careful when you buy this thing you'll wind up with the pan and scan. Charley Varrick needs a first class DVD release.
Movie Review: Yeah, but is the MOVIE any good?
Summary: 4 Stars
"Charley Varrick" appears on the NY Times list of best 1000 movies of all time. And we can see from the notes left by other Amazon users that the DVD is less than hoped. But what about the movie? Certainly we all know how far you can trust the typical movie critic, NY Times or otherwise.
Walter Matthau stars as a middle-aged former barnstorming stunt pilot and cropduster who, with his wife and a couple of business associates, decides they're tired of scraping for a living. So they set out on a life of crime, namely robbing banks. The film begins with a robbery about to be undertaken, and it goes horribly wrong...then goes so WAY right that it has to be WAY wrong. Stumbling across $0.75 mil of mob money in a tiny New Mexico town's lone bank, well, that's more take and more trouble than Charley Varrick ever bargained for. At least Varrick is smart enough to figure that out, while his only surviving associate doesn't seem to have the sense God gave a goony bird.
The setup sounds like it could be played for laughs, and any film with Matthau would seem to lead that way. But no, this is a full-bodied, complex drama, with multiple double crosses, manhunts, and inventive chase scenes. (Nary a cliche in the climactic chase that matches a Mafia hit man and his car chasing Varrick in a biplane around a field on the edge of the desert.)
There's a lot to like about this rather small film, directed by Don Siegel of "Dirty Harry" fame and co-starring Joe Don Baker of the original "Walking Tall." Varrick himself seems too clever and gifted as a criminal mastermind, given his low station in life, but this gives the impression of an intelligent, regular good guy who just finally got frustrated with said low station. Shots of his trailer are perfect in setting this atmosphere; here's a guy who never got a good break except that he married his soulmate, and even that is taken away from him in a series of scenes played with perfect pathos. Baker plays his sadistic role with panache and relish, and veteran character actor John Vernon, Dean Wormer of "Animal House," is again terrific as a shifty-eyed snake of the upper class who's out to undermine our antihero.
I don't know if this really belongs among the 1000 best movies ever, though. For instance, how did the local sheriff stumble across the identity of the bank robber? I never did see any hint of how this came to pass. And if you need comedy relief from Varrick's neighbor, could we please have something a little more fun than the stock crazy little old lady? Does anybody think the mob secretary would have inexplicably wound up in bed with pug-ugly Matthau, having basically been his hostage, if this were written by someone who understood women at all?
Regardless of a couple of nitpicks, "Charley Varrick" is the kind of bank caper flick that many such films aspire to: It's smart, engaging, and it works, with a minimum of imperfections. Yeah, I can see how it might squeeze into the bottom end of a list of 1000 best films. The ending, which ties up a number of apparent loose ends tossed out during its nearly 2-hour length, is as ideal as one could hope for too. Recommended.
Movie Review: To Be Matted Or Not Be Matted
Summary: 4 Stars
So long as studios continue to release DVDs shot with wide-angled lenses in only a reformatted television aspect ratio, we should all protest as vociferously as possible. Unfortunately, it appears that the outcry over `Charley Varrick' as shown by numerous critiques on this site and elsewhere is misinformed and does not apply. At the Internet Movie Data Base site (www.imdb.com), it is stated under the technical notes for `Charley Varrick' that the movie was filmed using the spherical lens system. This means that it was NOT filmed in a wide-angled lens format, but rather in the standard television aspect ratio of 1.33:1, which is what a spherical lens provides. For those who recall viewing it in a widescreen form in theaters or on cable shows like Bravo, this was because the movie was then `soft' matted into a 1.85:1 aspect following filming, by artificially masking the frame across the top and bottom, thus cutting off what was intended to be superfluous objects and views in those areas (note for example how the credits are centered to leave large spaces both above and below for the matting). When, as Universal does on the current DVD release, the movie is then declared `reformatted to fit the standard television screen,' what is meant is that the matting itself is not provided (unlike the laser disc release), and what the viewer is seeing is the original, spherical 35 mm print before it was masked. While one would perhaps feel more comfortable seeing it in its theatrically matted form, in reality nothing is lost in the DVD version as it would be if it was from a film shot with a wide-angle lens.
So please let us save our outcry for those films shot in the various wide-angle lens ratios that are then criminally released in the reformatted, 1.33:1 television aspect. I am referring, for example, to pick another Universal title, to a movie such as Van Damme's `Timecop,' originally shot in a 2.35:1 Panavision aspect and then cruelly cut down on the DVD for the standard television screen. This as far as we consumers go should not be tolerated, but we do need to aim our protests in the correct direction and not misfire when a matted rather than a genuine widescreen aspect movie is involved. (For an expert description of the various widescreen techniques, the site www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Makeup/4303/vertical35mm.html is strongly recommended.) In the meantime, hopefully we can all settle down and enjoy the quirky delights of Walter Matthau and Charley Varrick as it was originally filmed in the 1.33:1 television aspect ratio. As for those who MUST have the film as it appeared in theaters, by the way, the application of an inch or two of black masking tape across the top and bottom of your TV screen should give a reasonable representation of that original feeling!
Movie Review: Size does matter.
Summary: 4 Stars
Charlie Varrick 1973, directed by Don Siegel of Dirty Harry fame, is a highly entertaining film about a small time crook who robs the wrong bank and steals close to a million dollars of the mobs money. The film presents a dangerous but witty game of cat and mouse, in which Charlie Varrick, played by Walter Matthau must elude the many menacing forces that are closing in around him. At first glance it would seem that Walter Matthau is an extreamly odd choice for the lead in a suspenseful crime thriller, but his cleverness and humor brings a great deal of humanity, charm, and much needed warmth to someone that is otherwise a dangerous criminal who commits armed roberies. Charlie Varrick is such a mastermind, and the tricks he uses to outsmart the cops, the feds, and the mafia, are so fun to watch, that it is very easy to forget what he does for a living and cheer him on the whole way through. In many ways he seems like the ultimate magician, capable of the ultimate magic act. He makes himself disappear. It should be noted that he has a background as a circus performer, and that the first and last image we see on screen is the name of "Charlie Varrick" printed on cloth and burning, disappearing before our very eyes in the trunk of a car, both of these aspects seem to support this representation of who and what Charlie Varrick truly is, a magician.
What really makes this film a joy to watch is Don Siegels ability as a story teller. He has an uncanny ability to avoid the pitfalls of less professional directors. He is not trying to change the world, or blow your mind with amazement, instead he completely understands the scope of his project and presents the material in a simple streamlined mannor, completely uncluttered of any pretentious notion of trying to make the ultimate sprawling epic. Nothing is overtly dramatized here, there are no soppy Spielbergian moments, no grandiose speaches, no orchestra swells. He knew this was pure entertainment and let it play for exactly what it is. It is this approach that has not only held this film in relative obscurity through the years, but also makes it a great hidden gem worthy of a prime spot in your DVD collection.
Movie Review: Matthau Makes The Modern-Day Noir Work
Summary: 4 Stars
This was a pleasant surprise; better than I thought it would be, although I shouldn't have been surprised since Walter Matthau usually plays interesting roles.
What I appreciated was the realism of the story, except for two things at the end of the film such as no one coming to investigate a loud chase scenes and firebombing? Overall, the ending, however, was a very satisfying one, and one that brings you back for future viewings. Matthau also makes the film realistic, as he typecast perfectly for this role.
Other than Matthau, the cast isn't a big-name one but a lot of familiar faces and names from movies in the '60s and very early 70s such as John Vernon, Sheree North, Joe Don Baker and Felicia Farr.Andy Robinson, is a not a known name in movies because he did years of television, but viewers might remember him as the creepy "Scorpio Killer" in the first "Dirty Harry" film.
"Charlie Varrick" is considered a film noir even though it's 1973 and in color, but it's noir in story and that's good enough for me. This is definitely worth a look if you like crime films. The only thing that bothers me is why Universal refuses to put this out on 1.85:1 widescreen, the way it was shot.