Charley Varrick (1973 Don Siegel)

Tightly and beautifully plotted, and directed by a former montage designer, Charley Varrick is a springy bundle of energy, beginning with a brilliantly tense bank robbery that goes wrong, and rarely lets that momentum flag. The source is John Reese 'The Looters' (1968), the screenplay's by Howard Rodman and Dean Riesner.

Walter Matthau, playing it perfectly straight and winning the BAFTA, Andy Robinson and Jacqueline Scott rob a bank, unaware that it's being used as a drop for $750,000 of Mafia money. Dodgy bank president John Vernon sets Joe Don Baker after them. Very clever plotting in which Matthau is always one step ahead e.g. stuff involving dentist, and a particularly clever finale (which it seems Matthau himself didn't really understand - strange, as he was a smart guy). Edelman and Kufferberg's annoying autobiography devotes two paragraphs to it and only tells us that he was cast after losing a game of table tennis with Siegel - thanks. (Doesn't even mention his BAFTA win!)

Jack Lemmon's wife Felicia Farr plays Vernon's secretary who he ends up in bed with, Matthau's mate William Schallert plays the cop and his son Charlie is the boy outside the bank who gets the number plate wrong. Sheree North is the photographer, Norman Fell the detective, Benson Fong is 'Honest John' and Marjorie Bennett is the nosy neighbour (she'd been in Siegel's Coogan's Bluff and Robinson featured memorably in his Dirty Harry) and Siegel himself cameos as the man losing ping-pong.

It was originally to be a Walter Wanger film adapted by Peter Bogdanovich and Polly Platt, but the producer died and CBS passed on it.

Loved the pan which shows all the cops arriving at the trailer park, the flaming sign which both opens and closes the film, the general positioning of the camera. Filmed in Nevada by Michael Butler in 1.85:1, not Panavision, as mysteriously stated in the opening credits. Frank Morriss' editing received a BAFTA nomination, Lalo Schifrin wrote the very of its time score.

Can't help feeling there's North by Northwest references going on, as Matthau's a former crop dusting pilot, and one of the positions he and Farr try out in her round bed is 'South by south-west'!

Loved that her boyfriend John Vernon's in the background.
Walter's in bed with his great friend Jack Lemmon's wife!

We stupidly hadn't watched it in ten years...

I later read with interest that after making Targets, Peter Bogdanovich was contemplating filming this himself. "They initially wanted Don Siegel to direct but couldn't get him, so he recommended me.."