Themes: Lovers on the Lam, Escape From Prison, On the Run
Main Cast: Josephine Bennett, Walter Cooper, Lloyd Jones, Howard Warner, Keith Carradine, Shelley Duvall, John Schuck, Bert Remsen, Louise Fletcher
Release Year: 1974
Country: US
Run Time: 123 minutes
MPAA Rating: R
Plot
Released in the same 12-month span as Terrence Malick's Badlands (1973) and Steven Spielberg's The Sugarland Express (1974), Robert Altman's Thieves Like Us (1974) also tells a story of doomed outlaws in love. Depression-era criminals T-Dub (Bert Remsen), Chicamaw (John Schuck), and Bowie (Keith Carradine) band together to rob banks after escaping from a prison farm. Hiding out with Dee Mobley (Tom Skerritt) and Keechie (Shelley Duvall), and then with T-Dub's in-law Mattie (Louise Fletcher) between bank jobs, the three crooks are a loyal group, but increasingly sensational news accounts of their bloodless robberies force them to split up before their next crime. After a car accident, Chicamaw leaves the injured Bowie in Keechie's care. Love blossoms between the two naïfs, compelling Bowie to find a way to balance his bond to Keechie with his loyalty to his friends and the need for money to head for Mexico. With the law closing in, Bowie and Keechie learn the hard way about the finite honor among thieves, and the need to survive. Adapted from the same Edward Anderson novel as Nicholas Ray's They Live By Night (1949), Altman, writers Calder Willingham and Joan Tewkesbury, and Altman's acting "regulars" reworked not just the classical crime movie but also the 1967 hit Bonnie and Clyde, presenting a resolutely unglamorous portrait of this Coke-swilling outlaw couple and the survivors' stoic drive to carry on. With the radio providing soundtrack and commentary, and the newspapers sending a veiled warning, Bowie and Keechie cannot escape the outside world, but they also cannot transcend it into the realm of myth. Rather than turning the crimes into stylish exploits, Altman's camera remains outside most of the robberies, observing the banal action on the street; he saves the slow-motion in the climactic shoot-out for the witnesses rather than the dead. His zoom shots hover between fragments of emotion and place, while they maintain their observational distance. Unfortunately for Altman (and Malick and Spielberg), audiences preferred outlaw glamour to genre-bending introspection. Still, with its deceptively laid-back tone, eye for expressive detail, and ear for ironic juxtaposition, Thieves Like Us takes its place in Altman's exceptional body of early 1970s work. ~ Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide
Review
Like the masterful McCabe and Mrs. Miller (1971), Thieves Like Us finds Robert Altman taking a revisionist look at America's past; also like McCabe, it is rhythmically lyrical, visually beautiful (even when its surroundings fail to be "pretty"), and compassionate yet pitiless in its portrayal of misfits and losers on the wrong side of the law. Altman flawlessly evokes the languid pace and hazy, decaying beauty of the Deep South. While Thieves Like Us has more than a few parallels to Bonnie and Clyde and to Nicholas Ray's 1949 They Live By Night, based on the same novel, Altman finds a distinctive poetry and tragedy in the story, and its effects linger in the memory long after the film is over. In one of the least glamorous love stories in 1970s cinema, Keith Carradine and Shelley Duvall are ideal as Bowie and Keechie, and Altman makes several other inspired casting choices: John Schuck, often a comic-relief lummox, is electrifying as the violently short-tempered Chickamaw; Bert Remsen is right on target as the tragically short-sighted veteran criminal T-Dub, and future Oscar winner Louise Fletcher, in only her second film role, is superb as Mattie, both benefactor and nemesis to the thieves. Along with Nashville and McCabe and Mrs. Miller, Thieves Like Us ranks with the best of Altman's work. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
Tom Skerritt - Dee Mobley; Ann Latham - Lula; Rodney Lee, Jr. - James Mattingly; Suzanne Majure - Coca-Cola Girl; Eleanor Matthews - Mrs. Stammers; John Roper - Jasbo; Mary Waits - Noel; William Watters - Alvin; Arch Hall Sr. - Alvin; Nicholas Merriwether - Alvin; Joan Tewkesbury - Lady in Train Station; Pam Warner - Woman in Accident; Al Scott - Capt. Stammers; Josephine Bennett; Walter Cooper; Lloyd Jones - Sheriffs; Howard Warner - Bank Hostages
Credit
Scott Bushnell - Consultant/advisor, Jackson de Govia - Consultant/advisor, Robert Altman - Director, Lou Lombardo - Editor, Jackson de Govia - Production Designer, Jean Boffety - Cinematographer, George Litto - Producer, Jerry Bick - Producer, Robert Altman - Screenwriter, Joan Tewkesbury - Screenwriter, Calder Willingham - Screenwriter, Edward Anderson - Book Author
Bowie (Carradine), a youthful convicted murderer, and bank robbers Chicamaw (John Schuck) and T-Dub (Bert Remsen) escape from a Mississippi chain gang in the 1930s. They hole up with a gas station attendant and continue robbing banks.
Bowie, who is injured in an auto accident, takes refuge with the daughter of the gas station attendant, Keechie (Duvall). They become romantically involved but their relationship is strained by Bowie's refusal to turn his back on crime.
Chicamaw is eventually recaptured and T-Dub is killed while waiting in his car for his wife to come out. Bowie poses as a sheriff's deputy to extract Chickamaw from jail. But he quickly becomes disgusted with the violent, raving Chicamaw and abandons him on the side of the road.
The law catches up with Bowie, as they are betrayed by a motor hotel keeper, and he meets a violent end. Keechie carries on, pregnant with Bowie's baby.
Production notes
This film has no traditional score. All music in the film is "source music," usually presented as coming from a radio.
In addition to well-known actors and actresses of the era such as Keith Carradine and Shelley Duvall, the film features a large number of small town people as extras, including Lloyd Jones, an actual Mississippi State Highway Patrolman.[citation needed]
Earlier film version
Thieves Like Us differs from They Live By Night by being filmed largely on location in Mississippi, while the earlier movie was filmed primarily in a studio. The Bowie and Keechie characters in Thieves Like Us do not get married, and Bowie's innocence is not asserted as aggressively as in They Live By Night.
