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Siskoid
Sidney Lumet's The Anderson Tapes beats Coppola's The Conversation by a few years, in terms of putting the concept of hyper-surveillance on film, but it doesn't really know what to do with it. Initially, it's a little paranoid, and makes you think Sean Connery's heist will fail because he's been in the slammer for 10 years and isn't up on new police techniques. But then there's a confusion about who's doing the spying (several parties), and the idea gets lost once the criminal scheme takes off. Oh, it's gonna be a massive fiasco, don't worry, but the promise floated by the title and the first couple acts kind of slinks away, then makes a lame return at the end. I do like the heist and how things start to go wrong, if only in part because Connery's been out of practice. This is a movie that shows you all the moving parts, so the cops get something to do on screen, ramping up the tension in the third act. It's all the other stuff we're shown that doesn't necessarily pay off. The Anderson Tapes looked like it had something to say about the then-contemporary world of 1971, but the plot doesn't fully follow the theme, and the message gets lost in Lumet's verité stylings. But hey, "introducing Christopher Walken" might be enough of an incentive!
ClassicLady
Actually, it has its great scenes like I actually liked the movie. It's not in one of my top ten, but I'd watch it again.
dombrewer
Has there ever been a more inconsistent director than Sidney Lumet? A filmography that includes Twelve Angry Men, Dog Day Afternoon, Fail-Safe, The Pawnbroker, Network, Serpico… also has something as dramatically inept as this amongst his disasters. It really is a terrible film with pretensions of cleverness. Connery and Lumet worked together brilliantly elsewhere - The Hill and The Offence are both fantastic. This is horribly dated - the electro-jazz Quincy Jones score sounds like it was cut and pasted from the cheapest porn film of 1971, the editing is messy, the script is lamentable. Connery himself looks and sounds ridiculous (dispensing his toupee for the first time, but unable to shift his Scottish accent) amongst a cast who all seem miscast - Martin Balsam possibly giving a career worst turn as an effeminate antiques dealer. Christopher Walken barely bothers. You probably shouldn't either.