Straight time last chance vibe

The Nickel Ride and other 1970s films about aging blue collar criminals

Back in April I wrote a post on what I consider to be one of the most genuinely underrated American neo-noirs of the 1970s, Robert Mulligan’s The Nickel Ride.

This piece, which you can read in full here, led me to co-hosting, along with wonderful Canadian critics Martin Kessler and Felicia Maroni, an episode of the Pink Smoke podcast on The Nickel Ride, part of their series on landmark films of 1974.

This episode is now live and you can listen to it here.

Just to very briefly recap, The Nickel Ride stars Jason Miller (in his first performance after the breakout success of his 1973 film, The Exorcist) as Cooper, a mid-level operative in the Los Angeles crime scene, who managers several downtown warehouses where the local mob stash their stolen merchandise. Cooper is under major pressure from the shadowy syndicate he works for to get hold of a large track of old commercial warehouse space that would be perfect for their needs. But there seems to be some sort of complication preventing him from closing the deal.

While this is going on, Cooper’s immediate boss, Carl (John Hillerman, instantly recognisable as Higgins in Magnum PI), assigns Turner (Bo Hopkins), a cocky cowboy enforcer, to shadow Cooper. Carl insists Turner is only there to learn the business. But Cooper suspects he is really around to kill and replace him.

I thought I knew a lot about The Nickel Ride but, as is always the case when you are doing a film podcast with other clever people, there were several interesting perspectives offered up during our discussion that added to my understanding. Foremost, was Felicia’s perceptive observation that what makes The Nickel Ride so good is its vibe. And, to be honest, you either get that vibe or you don’t. Needless to say, I get it big time. It’s why American cinema from the early 1970s is one of my favourite film making periods.

The Nickel Ride, like so many American films from the late 1960s and early 1970s, is big on vibe: it’s washed out, murky look; the slow, at times almost dream like pacing and discursive story telling style; the low key nature of so many of the characters and their interactions; a plot that doesn’t feel it has to neatly explain everything.

One of the other things that we discussed in the Pink Smoke episode was how The Nickel Ride is part of a loose body of American neo-noir from around the same period to feature ageing, low level criminals who have lost their taste for the lawless world they inhabit and, as a result, find themselves having to fight for survival against younger, much hungrier, up and comers. Connected to this is the way these films portray these criminals, what they do, and how they talk about it, as just like any other blue collar profession.

Anyway, here are six American neo-noirs, most of which I mentioned in the Pink Smoke podcast episode, that fit into this oeuvre and go heavy on the vibe.

The Last Run (1971)

George C. Scott stars in this film by journey man director Richard Fleischer, shot in Spain and Portugal. Scott plays Harry Garmes, an aging career criminal who made his bones as a wheelman for the Chicago mob. He is living in self-imposed obscurity in Portugal when he gets a lucrative job offer to drive an escaped killer, Rickard, and his girlfriend across Spain and into France. What Garmes doesn’t know is that the job has been organised by a far right French organisation as part of their plan to set Rickard up to assassinate French President Charles De Gaulle. Not surprisingly, complications ensure. I have to be honest and say it has been a while since I’ve seen this The Last Run, but I remember it being very good.

The Getaway (1972)

Written by Walter Hill, directed by Sam Peckinpah, based on the book by Jim Thompson, and starring Steve McQueen, Ali MacGraw, Al Lettieri, Ben Johnson and Slim Pickens, I ask you, what is not to like about this film? I actually think it is one of Peckinpah’s best films.

Harry in Your Pocket (1973)

Compared to most of his joyously mojo intensive cinematic romps in the 1960s and 1970s, Harry in Your Pocket sees James Coburn deliver a downbeat, even taciturn, performance as the professional pickpocket of the title. Working with his long-term offsider, Casey (Walter Pidgeon), Harry recruits two young drifters, played by Michael Sarazin and Trish Van Devere, and educates them in the art of pickpocketing. There is a caper feel to some of the film, especially the choreographed sequences in which the four team members coordinate various pickpocketing scams, set to a lush Lalo Schifrin score. But for the most part this is a stripped back, tough nut of a story, riffing off the well-worn trope of the career grifter who can’t stop plying their trade even as they sense the times are no longer favourable to them. 

The Friends of Eddie Coyle (1973)

Eddie ‘Fingers’ Coyle (Robert Mitchum) is a fifty one year-old ex-con, a gun runner and Christ knows what else in his criminal career, facing the prospect of a three to five-year jail stretch for being caught driving a truckload of stolen whisky. He’ll do whatever he can to stay out of prison, including trading the information he has about a gang of professional bank robbers who he’s been supplying handguns. The problem is he is not the only one who is talking to the cops. The granddaddy of films about old criminal being eaten by their young, The Friends of Eddie Coyle is a no frills depiction of desperate men doing whatever they have to do to stay one step ahead of each other and the law.

The Outfit (1973)

There was definitely something in the water in 1973, because this is the third film from that year to be featured here. Written and directed by John Flynn and based on the 1963 Donald Westlake Parker novel of the same name. Career criminal Earl Macklin (Robert Duvall) is fresh out of jail where he has been doing a stint for carrying a concealed firearm. He reunites with his long suffering girlfriend, Bett (Karen Black), and his former associate, Cody (Joe Don Baker), and declares war on the criminal organisation that killed his brother. Duvall nails the taciturn, largely humourless, at times brutal professional criminal that Parker is on the page. Leaving aside John Boorman’s 1967 classic Point Blank, there is a very strong argument to be made that this is the Parker screen adaptation.

Straight Time (1978)

Dustin Hoffman plays a career criminal just out of prison, trying to stay on the right side of his ball breaking parole officer, masterfully played by one of my screen heroes, the recently departed M. Emmet Walsh, and avoid the temptation of re-offending. Straight Time is based on the book No Beast So Fierce, by real life con Edward Bunker (who has a small role in the film). Everything about this film works, the script, the down at heel late seventies feel, the cast, which includes Theresa Russell, Gary Busey, Kathy Bates and Harry Dean Stanton. It’s also got a jewellery store heist towards the end that is eye meltingly tense.

My book Stuff

My new PM Press book, co-edited with Samm Deighan, Revolution in 35mm: Political Violence and Resistance in Cinema from the Arthouse to the Grindhouse, 1960-1990, continues to be getting positive coverage and I just wanted to share some of it with you.

I talked about the book on the wonderful podcast, The Long Seventies. It is quite a lengthy discussion about the book’s themes and how Samm and I put it together. Being about period known as the Long Seventies, my hosts were also particularly interested in the section of the book I wrote on the films of Patty Hearst.

Revolution in 35mm also scored a detailed and very thoughtful review in the prestigious Los Angeles Review of Books, which you can read in full here.

The book is available from online and physical book shops. You can also pick it up as a physical and ebook from the publisher at this link here.

Some of you may not know it, but I also write crime fiction. My latest book, published in 2023, is called Orphan Road and it is a sequel to my 2016 novel Gunshine State.

Orphan Road sees my (not so) professional thief Gary Chance become involved in the murky aftermath of one of Australia’s largest heists, Melbourne’s Great Bookie Robbery. In April 1976, a well organised gang stole as much as $16 million from bookmakers in the Victoria Club, located on the second floor of a building in Queen Street in the Melbourne’s CBD. The real amount was never confirmed and the culprits, although they are known now, were never identified at the time or apprehended. As the starting point for Orphan Road I posited the question, what if a large amount of cash wasn’t the only thing stolen that day in April 1976. And then, what if Chance was engaged nearly half a century later, to try and find that other thing that was stolen.

Nearly two years after it came out, Orphan Road is still getting new readers and positive reviews. The most recent one is this thoughtful piece about the book by Nick Diak on his site here.

Like the films I mentioned above, both Gunshine State and Orphan Road, are heavy on the vibe, which you will either like or not. Both novels are available via Down and Out Books and all the usual platforms if you want to pick them up.