Most crime movies are about clever criminals who pull off elaborate heists that either succeed or else fail because of genius on the part of a cop or a single stroke of bad luck. “Straight Time” is one of the few to show criminals as the self-destructive idiots that most of them are. It's probably the most realistic crime movie I have seen.
Fresh out of prison, Max Dembo (Dustin Hoffman) tells himself it's time to go straight, but he immediately screws up, failing to check in at his halfway house. This gets him a lecture from his condescending parole officer (M. Emmet Walsh). Given another chance, he gets his own apartment, then immediately gets together with an old criminal associate (Gary Busey), who shoots heroin in Max's apartment, the evidence of which eventually gets Max a weekend in jail and leads to his inevitable spiral back into crime.
Before things go south, Max does make a token effort at going straight. He follows his instructions to report to the employment office, where he gets a crappy factory job, but meets a cute girl. Jenny (Theresa Russell) seems like a girl from a nice family, but she is intrigued by the confident ex-con and eagerly gets sucked into his orbit. Meanwhile, Max is committing armed robberies again, and his self-destructive impulses drive him to take bigger and bigger chances.
The sad thing is that a good life
should be within Max's grasp. He does some stupid things, but he's
got some smarts. You'd think that the chance to be with a gorgeous
babe like Jenny would make a guy want to either go straight or at
least be more measured in his life of crime, maybe play it safe. But
maybe if Max were the kind of guy who could do that, he never would
have been able to attract Jenny in the first place. “Straight Time”
is, ultimately, a movie about how we all are who we are, and we just
can't help ourselves. For Max and his friends, returning to prison or being killed seems easier than having to do straight time.
4 stars out of 5
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