by Mike DiGioia

I can rattle off a myriad of lost crime and action gems from the late sixties to the early eighties. Interestingly enough, though, most action films within that decade and a half weren’t necessarily full-on action films, but more so crime films grounded in a much more plausible reality, with the addition of brilliant, effective action beats implemented within the story. Films like Point Blank, Bullitt, Dirty Harry, The Seven-Ups, The French Connection I and II, The Outfit, and Thief come to mind, and that’s only a few. It wasn’t until the approach of the mid eighties when we started to see some of the more extravagant, over-blown, Stallone/Schwarzenegger/Lundgren/Norris/Van Damme high-end cinematic carnage, not to mention the even more excessive, yet wonderfully choreographed bullet-ridden mayhem John Woo introduced to us, and even he’s a director who’s been heavily influenced by the nuances of much grittier, intricate plot structures that directors like Jean-Pierre Melville created in his films, like Le Samourai from 1967 and Le Cercle Rouge from 1970, to name a couple.

I’m babbling a bit, but consider it a preface to future reviews of films in similar genres.  To get back to the original point; one of these lost gems is Don Siegel’s 1973 crime/action/thriller, Charley Varrick, starring Walter Matthau as the title character.  Now, Matthau has continuously and adeptly made a mark in comedy, drama, and crime/action, providing compelling characters in each genre. In Charley Varrick, he works part time as a crop duster, but his true skills pin him as a quick-witted career criminal; he encompasses such an engaging level of intelligence and diligence.  These attributes allow him to heist money from a small-town bank with commanding authority, and, as the story progresses, evade the mob, particularly one of their top enforcers, Molly (played by the harrowing Joe Don Baker), by concocting an elaborate plan to clear his name so he’s never found or heard of again, as it turns out it was the mob’s money he realized he had stolen during the film’s opening robbery sequence.

Now, if someone suggested I check out this movie, and described it as Walter Matthau vs. the Mob, then I’d be sold on that mini synopsis alone. I’ve always found it enthralling to follow films that involve intelligent criminals, whether it be them robbing a bank, conning corrupt, high-powered individuals, or whether it be a prisoner escaping a prison using carefully detailed precision; anything that requires a character to work their unique knowledge into some complex scheme.  And with Walter Matthau at the helm of such a plan, I can’t help but surrender additional enjoyment for Charley Varrick, though that’s not to say the film wouldn’t work as well with another actor, even an unknown one; it’s just a sold movie all together regardless.  I point that out only because it continually grates me that audiences are only, or even mostly drawn to films that star A-list, well-known celebrities, especially when there’s a slew of unknowns with equal, or even better talent.  Unfortunately, people don’t trust an interesting story on its own merits.  Though, I find this to be more of an issue today.  That being said, Walter Matthau nonetheless is such a pleasing presence on screen.

Charley Varrick is Siegel’s follow-up to his gritty, no-nonsense Dirty Harry, so he fits right at place here, delivering another hard-boiled story from the seventies.  What works here so well for Matthau’s character is his ability to think on the spot, and this propels the story at almost a breakneck pace, but not in the action-packed sense of the way, except for the first fifteen to twenty minutes, where we’re treated with a heist sequence, a car chase, and a fun, though-out escape plan, all done with gripping fashion.

However, once Varrick realizes he stole the mob’s money, every following scene, for the most part, is a new step in his plan to remedy this issue he knew would never cease to exist if he didn’t take matters into his own hands.  It’s intriguing to see how each of these steps leads to his ultimate getaway, and it’s these unfolding plot elements that create this sort of breakneck pace to the story; that’s always how I looked at it.  I won’t spoil how Varrick pulls it all off, but looking at it cinematically, it’s quite brilliant and engaging.  I say cinematically because there’s one question that will surely arise in anyone’s mind while watching the film:  As smart as he was, would Varrick’s scheme really work as seamlessly as it ended up doing so?  Truthfully, it probably wouldn’t.  Usually in caper films, within these complicated scenes, something goes wrong either halfway through, or more towards the end.  The way this is structured, though, the overall conflict presents itself before the half-hour mark, and the rest of the movie is Walter Matthau with the upper hand.  Even when mob boss, Maynard Boyle, played by John Vernon, dispatches Molly, he never really becomes a true foil for Varrick, even with his violent, unrelenting nature; Matthau’s character is always one step ahead, which someone could potentially find detrimental to the realism of the film, but his plan is so involving that I feel it works well here.

I haven’t talked too much about the supporting characters, aside from snippets about Joe Don Baker and John Vernon (who plays a similarly sleazy role in John Boorman’s Point Blank), but the main star here really is Matthau, and that’s not to say the others don’t deserve their merits; I can’t forget about Andrew Robinson, too, who played the Scorpio killer in Dirty Harry; in this film, he plays Harman Sullivan, one of Varrick’s partners during the opening heist sequence, and when Varrick explains to Sullivan that it would be foolish to spend any of that money knowing the mob will stop at nothing to find them, he still confidently resists Varrick’s reasoning.  Simply put, he’s careless, irrational, and dense about the whole situation, and it’s those unremitting traits that help Varrick trigger the direction he intends to take with his overall scheme.  And this further exemplifies his astuteness, as he seems to have an endgame to his plan a short while after he realizes he needs a plan.  It’s that astuteness that makes for such a compelling film to watch; Varrick’s not picking up a bazooka and blowing the whole mob into pieces; he isn’t riddling them with thousands of bullets; he’s using a calm and confident intellect to best them.  (Although, I can’t say I don’t enjoy my fair share of some bulletry turmoil…from time to time).

With action films today reaching budgets of $150-$250 million, audiences are bombarded with digitally rendered explosions, backgrounds, and characters.  Don’t get me wrong, there is a place for films like that, if handled with narrative care, a strong script, and solid acting.  They do exist, and there are plenty of them I enjoy immensely, but films like Charley Varrick, and the others I mentioned above, have greatly diminished over the decades.  We still get some directors who acknowledge the effective impact of the more subtle action/crime stories; William Friedkin’s underrated The Hunted, Olivier Marchal’s 36th Precinct, and Nicolas Winding Refn’s Drive come to mind, but no time period in film covers the crafty mold of the action/crime genre in which films like Charley Varrick materialized from.