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| The tagline for the US poster for Don Siegel's Charley Varrick, together with Walter Matthau's participation, could make you think that the film is an action comedy, (which it isn't) |
QUICK REVIEW:
Charley and his three cohorts rob the small Tres Cruces bank, but by a coincidence, the bank holds 750k $ in mob money on this particular day. With a dim-witted partner, a goon and the police at his heels, Varrick tries to navigate for safety.
Usually great comedic actor Walter Matthau (The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974)) works surprisingly well bereft of his crooked smile as the title antihero here; Andrew Robinson (Dirty Harry (1968)) is good as (like in master director Don Siegel's (The Verdict (1946)) Dirty Harry) a psychopath, and Joe Don Baker (The Living Daylights (1987)) is equally commanding as the mob hitman.
Varrick is a hardboiled, efficient, economically edited heist thriller adaptation of a John H. Reese (Pity Us All (1969)) novel from 1968 called The Looters by screenwriters Howard Rodman (Coogan's Bluff (1968)) and Dean Riesner (High Plains Drifter (1973)).
It is marvelously entertaining, another cool and gritty movie from Chicagoan Siegel, a master of American cinema from the 1950s through the 70s.
Related reviews:
Don Siegel: The Beguiled (1971) - Intense, erotic Civil War kammerspiel thriller
Coogan's Bluff (1968) or, Dopes and Hippies, Beat It!
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| German poster for Don Siegel's Charley Varrick with Walter Matthau in his robbery disguise |
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| A very differently styled Soviet poster for Don Siegel's Charley Varrick |
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| The action-promising Japanese poster for the movie |
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| The tagline The Last of the Independents was director Don Siegel's title preference for the film, which got dumped by Universal Pictures |
Watch the trailer for the film here
Cost: Unknown
Box office: Unknown
= Uncertainty
[But reportedly a disappointment. Siegel blamed the poor audience reception on Matthau, who apparently talked badly of the film in public, seemingly because Siegel refused to explain the story more to the audience, as Matthau had insisted it needed. Varrick looks like a typical Siegel-Clint Eastwood movie (of which there were several), and it is likely that it would have become a home-run financially also, if Eastwood had been the protagonist instead of Matthau, for whom this was a highly untraditional vehicle for, and who wasn't normally a film-carrying star.]
What do you think of Charley Varrick?
What is your favorite Don Siegel movie and why?
(Mine is Escape From Alcatraz (1979))
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