“Straight Time” (1978)
Based on Eddie Bunker‘s novel “No Beast So Fierce,” an ex-con turned crime fiction author and occasional actor (he played Mr. Blue in “Reservoir Dogs”) in many circles of cinephelia, “Straight Time” is an uncrowned jewel that doesn’t get enough love. Originally meant to be Dustin Hoffman’s directorial debut, after several weeks of shooting, Hoffman realized he was in over his head by starring and directing in the same movie and he asked his friend, Belgian-born filmmaker Ulu Grosbard, to take over the movie (they met when Grosbard was directing an off-Broadway revival of Arthur Miller’s “A View from the Bridge,” and Hoffman served as stage manager and assistant director). While it nearly cost them their friendship (and did for several years), “Straight Time” is a somber, gritty and vastly underestimated thriller. Featuring an excellent supporting cast including Theresa Russell, Gary Busey, Harry Dean Stanton, M. Emmet Walsh, and Kathy Bates, Hoffman stars as Max Dembo, a lifelong thief just paroled after six long years, who’s hoping to go straight, play by the rules and get a regular job. But hounded by a manipulative asshole parole officer (Walsh) who’s more than happy to throw him back in the pen at a moment’s notice, Dembo’s desire to stay on the straight and narrow is severely tested every second of his newfound freedom. While he meets and woos a young girl (Russell) while job hunting and wants to start something anew with her, Dembo eventually snaps when the officer tries to pin a bullshit drug charge on him, realizing he’s simply never going to catch a break. The inevitable happens, and Dembo returns to a life of crime, eventually planning a big jewel heist with some old accomplices. Throughout, Hoffman embodies this gentle ex-con with a short fuse with effortless realism; if you didn’t know better at the time, you’d have thought the actor was simply playing himself, his natural cool and confidence is so in the pocket. There’s a lot of nice atypical texture for a convict; Dembo is a charmer, soft-spoken, empathetic, tense and nervy when crimes are going down. Simply put, “Straight Time” is criminally undervalued in every way.
“American Buffalo” (1996)
In the short history of the conversion of David Mamet‘s plays to films, “American Buffalo” (one of the writer’s earliest works, produced shortly after “Sexual Perversity In Chicago“) doesn’t exactly sit at the top of the tree with “Glengarry Glen Ross.” Revolving around junk-shop owner Donny (Dennis Franz), aspiring thief Teach (Hoffman) and a young kid (Sean Nelson) who conspire to rob a rare coin collection, it’s a low-key, stagy picture that doesn’t manage to translate to film nearly as well as James Foley‘s take on ‘Glengarry’ did. But Hoffman as Teach (a part played by Al Pacino in a 1983 Broadway version, and originally intended for him in the film) is absolutely terrific. Like a version of Ratso Rizzo from “Midnight Cowboy” had he survived, Teach is a sleazy scavenger of society, so full of nervous energy he feels ready to burst. Given that he’d not had much experience with Mamet’s rat-a-tat dialog before (they’d reunite the next year for “Wag The Dog,” which won the actor an Oscar nomination), Hoffman takes to it like a fish to water, displaying tremendous chemistry with Franz (even if third wheel Nelson can’t match them). You come away from the film wishing you’d seen Hoffman do it on stage too, but you’re still glad you saw him do it at all.
