Eye Candy #70 - "The Anderson Tapes"

The Anderson Tapes: This is an interesting little movie from the 70’s starring Sean Connery and Christopher Walken (in his first role) that I found in the Maltin movie guide (which is next to worthless usually). Duke Anderson (Connery), just released from prison, puts together a crew to rob an upscale apartment building (that his girlfriend happens to live in) one apartment at a time, while keeping the tenants hostage and severing electronic communications to the outside world. Unbeknownst to Anderson, various law enforcement groups have him under surveillance, including the FBI, IRS, and the BNDD. Except the groups are working independently and don’t share their respective pieces of Anderson’s particular puzzle (that would be the “tapes” referred to in the title), so no one knows what’s really going on until it happens and by then, they are all playing catch up. Low-key, well-made with good performances (and a distracting score by Quincy Jones that seems to rely mostly on obnoxious noise effects rather than actual music), this would make an interesting bookend to Coppola’s “The Conversation”, as it also deals with the increasing prevalence of electronic surveillance in our daily lives, without the heavy handedness of something like “Enemy of the State”. Would give it 3 1/2 stars if I could. Woodchuck sez, “Worth a look.”