Of all Robert Altman’s 1970s genre subversions, surely “Thieves Like Us” had the most promising commercial prospects. A nostalgic ode to bank robbery, the film tracks three blue-collar prison escapees on a trail of heists, each one getting them closer to quitting the game. Alas, Altman’s Box Office cold streak continued, and “Thieves” languished into obscurity, despite some early critical raves (“It’s a masterpiece” — Pauline Kael) which lauded the bold, reserved adaptation of Edward Anderson’s novel. Radiance Films is out with a new digital transfer of Altman’s contrarian take on the shoot-’em-up, which foregrounds contemplative moments and romantic pursuits in favor of repeated stick-ups and gun fights. And so the film becomes more of an elegy to — instead of a cheerleader for, or admonishment of — these admirable loners, the types who, in the words of T-Dub (Bert Remsen), should’ve learned to rob with their minds, instead of guns.
It’s wishful thinking to imagine T-Dub, Bowie (Keith Carradine) and Chicamaw (John Schuck) making a living any other way. Within the film’s opening minutes, the three inmates hijack a car and flee prison, with a half-baked plan to rob a few banks and then retire to Mexico (T-Dub) or New Jersey (Bowie). The film swerves from the customary heist film immediately, with Altman and his scriptwriters (Joan Tewksbury — who is interviewed in the limited-edition Radiance release — and Calder Willingham) more concerned with revealing personal details, prioritizing how the fellas intend to spend their money and obsess over media coverage. It becomes a hangout movie, a retro Altman party fixated on the quotidian routines that make up a day: dinner table conversations, rambling, delusional monologues about each man’s proposed happy ending. And the more we learn about these men, the more inevitable their failure becomes.
Altman Assembles his Cast of Characters
Chicamaw is the drinker, thin-skinned and most jubilant when the newspapers mention him on the front page. T-Dub is a dreamer, a self-styled expert who’s fond of exaggerating the number of jobs (“Well, gentlemen, this’ll be my 33rd bank!”) he’s pulled off, looking to impress anyone who will listen. Then there’s Bowie, a former ballplayer with a laconic charisma that could only be labeled Carradine-sque. Bowie has the most potential because of his age and temperament, an equal blend of pragmatism mixed with an unforced, accommodating disposition. Whereas the other two bicker and jockey for who can lead the bank hold up, Bowie’s content to drive the car, repeating his favorite phrase: “That suits me.”
After leaving jail, Bowie is waiting for a ride to the hideout. Walking along a railway line, he finds a dog and asks, “Do you belong to someone? Or are you a thief like me?” On another occasion, T-Dub also uses “thief” outside of the customary definition. Midway through the film, when expressing frustration about how the newspapers refer to him as “three-toe,” T-Dub imagines his future, when he’ll steal enough money so that he can quit robbing banks and “find a doctor who’s a thief like us who could saw off those fingerprints and fix that foot.” Each man recaptures the word to explain themselves (and the film’s title): Bowie’s a lonely drifter whose closest connection is with a stray dog, and he pulls it close to him with a sense of urgency that verges on the erotic. And T-Dub, in one of his several Terry Malloy speeches laments that he wasn’t a doctor or lawyer, a white collar grifter who doesn’t need a gun to collect a bounty.
Making Crime Look Easy
Bowie’s aimless meandering doesn’t change until he meets Keechie (Shelley Duvall) at a garage where the group lays low. Keechie’s younger than Bowie, or at least acts that way. When Bowie asks if she’d gotten her hair cut she looks down at her feet, saying, “I don’t know.” (As it turns out, Altman actually was the barber.) Later, when Bowie brags about the money he stole, she tells him that it’s “good for you, if that’s what you want,” adding a precocious touch that evokes Carson McCullers’ fiction. Duvall is skillful at melding a demure sensibility that transforms when she asserts herself as an equal, not a mere ingenue. A Texas native, Duvall’s accent feels right at home in depression-era Mississippi; her tough, resolute kindness runs counter to the typical temptress/moll prevalent in noir-ish heist formulas.
And what about this heist? The first one we see is fake, an amateur stage play constructed by T-Dub and Chicamaw, when they’re staying with T-Dub’s sister-in-law Mattie (Louise Fletcher). Drinking and showing off, the two men hold up Mattie’s youngest son (Rodney Lee, Jr., donning black face for a regrettable minute) and older daughter Lula (Ann Latham). This performance is no rehearsal, it’s a chance for T-Dub and Chicamaw to show off, displaying their bravery and gumption to the youngsters. And for a time, the make-pretend scenario’s the only live theft Altman portrays — a tactic which mocks the process and humanizes the fools who do the job. Chicamaw’s the unstable, sensitive drunk, somehow capable of competence. T-Dub, brashly overcompensating for his bum foot, brags and flirts with Lula, hoping to impress with cool-under-faux-pressure, which signals his providing capabilities (“This is gonna be my 36th bank!”) to facilitate this eventual (illegal?) courtship.
Elegance Trumps Ethics
When it’s time to witness an actual bank heist, Altman and Cinematographer Jean Boffety set the lens up high, peering down at the action with a security camera’s gaze. A preceding robbery followed Bowie waiting outside in the getaway car, highlighting the chaotic aftermath which implied some difficulty in procuring the loot. Observing the crime in real time makes it look easy: the hostages are calm and abiding, the men with guns have simple demands. And then, when a teller reaches for his pocket too quickly, Chicamaw shoots him dead. It’s not the last time Chicamaw acts the part of wild card in action, and having the camera at a bird’s eye view signals that this whole ordeal is being recorded, and even a successful, bloodless outcome would have spelled trouble from which there is no escape.
In a recent New Yorker essay, Kathryn Schulz wrote about the heist genre, as part of her review of Michael Finkel’s “The Art Thief” (2023). In heist fiction, she writes elegance “really does trump ethics,” so it’s natural that the blueprint heist films (“Ocean’s Eleven,” “The Thomas Crown Affair”) please audiences with smooth operators conducting impossible, high-stakes gambits. It helps of course that the antagonists are attractive (George Clooney, Julia Roberts in “Ocean’s”), polished (Steve McQueen in the original “Thomas Crown,” Pierce Brosnan in the remake) and ooze sex appeal (most everyone in all versions of both those films). The unfortunate early-20th Century hairstyles and down-home turns-of-phrases in “Thieves” strip away any performative grace, and the three leads from Altman’s stock company defy star quality in appearance — Carradine’s long, slender frame, Schuck’s Neanderthal masculinity, Remsen’s fake limp and beat-red complexion — though the compensate (rather, complement) with layered, live-wire performances.
A Film Praised for its Simplicity
Schulz is perceptive in singling out the elements of a heist that appeal to broader audiences, calling out the tropes (one last job!) and improbable excellence these thieves possess (it can’t be done!). These juicy components are notably absent from “Thieves,” which insists on deviating from what’s familiar even at the end, when what could play like an imitation of “Bonnie and Clyde’s” splattered, gruesome finale is more elegiac, with bullets flying and a body carted off, but no sign of charred flesh or dismembered figures. From there, the film ends with an ellipsis — not a bang — following Keechie out of a train station, transferring the story and glory to her, as the last woman (with a bun in the oven) standing.
Kael’s New Yorker review praised “Thieves’” simplicity (“nothing to stumble over”), labeling it the “easiest-to-like picture Altman has ever made.” But perhaps that shaggy-dog, revisionist quality caused the film to flop, a fate from which it emerged with a small cult following when it was featured on Los Angeles’ Z Channel in the 1980s. An audience that craves an action picture might reject it when disguised as an art film; give me “Airport” or give me Bergman! Altman’s greatest triumphs in the 1970s were oddball twists on stalwart genres, first the Western (“McCabe” & Mrs. Miller”) then the musical (“Nashville”). Neither of those masterpieces thrived commercially, but at least they nabbed some awards-season validation. Meanwhile, “Thieves” received no such buzz, and was yanked from distribution; Schuck himself said that it was so “non-mainstream that the studio had no idea how to promote it.”
A Roundup of the Heist Genre and Rebels
The opinions of Kael and Schuck seem to contradict each other, but they can both be right, and Schuck’s assessment has the benefit of hindsight. The easy-to-likeness fades with the non-mainstream-ness, when the supposed glamor of the heist yields to the subdued romance in Keechie’s garage. And even that pairing is unconventional. Carradine and Duvall, with their trim builds, toothy smiles and wishful, inviting eyes, hardly resemble the sultry, stylish duos from blockbuster action heists during that era or today. These are people of their time, living for each other, and that Bowie robs banks is only incidental to the goal of earning a living so he and Keechie can eventually fade that life. Whereas Nic Cage — which Schulz mentions in her review — in “Gone in 60 Seconds” doesn’t steal for the money (“I did it for the car.”), Bowie robs banks because it’s his job.
Altman wasn’t the first director to adapt Anderson’s 1937 novel, although he reportedly was unaware that Nicholas Ray already had made “They Live By Night” (1948). While Altman’s often labeled a maverick for his anti-studio, anti-genre attitude, Ray broke ground as an uncompromising voice who consistently wove taboo subject matter into his most important films, from Sal Mineo’s closeted queer character in “Rebel Without a Cause” (1955) to James Mason’s drug addicted teacher in “Bigger Than Life” (1956). Oliver Stone called Ray a “loopy guy who made loopy films, that’s why the Europeans love him.” Martin Scorsese, another admirer, had grouped him with Hollywood insider-outsiders such as Samuel Fuller and Douglas Sirk, who made a habit of “smuggling” controversial topics into studio projects.
Sedating the Darker Sides of ‘Thieves Like Us” Felons
No surprise then that Ray’s version had its own troubles, including — like Altman’s — a precarious release story. Howard Hughes (who preferred “They Live” to “Thieves Like Us” and “The Twisted Road”) delayed the release date by two years because he was in the process of buying RKO. And like Altman’s film, “They Live” is nowhere to be found on the streaming-sphere. Criterion did, however, release a 2K restoration of Ray’s debut in 2017, with an exhaustive and enlightening essay by film historian Bernard Eisenschitz, who described Ray’s grueling censorship battles, such as when he refused to present Keechie as “a potent force of morality.” Altman’s tussle a half-century later was much different, although Schuck’s sentiment alludes to “Thieves’” mellow storytelling strategy in the era of a New Hollywood aesthetic which glorified rebels (“Easy Rider”), forgave their rage (“Five Easy Pieces”), and celebrated retaliatory violence (“Taxi Driver”).
In “Thieves,” the misfits rage and retaliate, yet Altman’s touch (thanks in no small part to Tewksbury’s humanism and compassion, displayed again in her “Nashville” script) sedates the darkest sides of these felons. And while plenty of violence happens off-screen, two brutal murder sequences skillfully shock without manipulating for pure entertainment value. The first happens when Chicamaw shoots a cop, a startling jolt that’s less cold because it’s in defense of Bowie, who’s bleeding to death. Bowie had just caused a car accident when he adjusted the radio dial and plowed into another car, killing at least one elderly passenger. For all the preceding crimes, this is the one that turns the film, and yet, it’s understandable — ethical, even — considering the circumstances. Still, it elevates the desperation for the men to flee, especially since soon after, Bowie finds out Keechie is pregnant.
Shelley Duvall Warming up for ‘The Shining’
Keechie stays in focus during the second startling murder, a final bloodbath, when she has to be restrained by Mattie while a killing squad fires rounds into the home where Bowie was hiding. Keechie howls for Bowie, who doubtless died instantly, but Altman doesn’t satisfy our morbid curiosity, keeping the action on the outside; Duvall’s anguished tears and wails look and sound like a warm up for her lead role in “The Shining” (1980). When the bullets stop, the law puts down the rifles and, without emotion, cart a lifeless Bowie out of the house. He never stood a chance, and the decision to only show the dead body instead of blood-laden shootout distances Altman’s film from the era’s prevailing auteurist codas, whose champions included Arthur Penn (“Bonnie, Night Moves”), Scorsese (“Mean Streets,” “Taxi Driver”) and Sam Peckinpah (“The Wild Bunch,” “Straw Dogs”).
No thief has the honor of a hero’s death. T-Dub’s fate is announced over the radio and Chicamaw is last seen abandoned on the side of the road following an argument with Bowie. A running theme is how T-Dub and Chicamaw resent that Bowie’s considered the leader in newspapers: Chicamaw picks that final fight to which Bowie responds by stopping the car and asking him to leave. So that’s what it came down to, Chicamaw can bust out of jail twice and get away with murder, he just can’t stomach second billing. It’s not envy that kills T-Dub, but greed, an inability to keep a low profile because he wants to spend money and impress Lula, his pseudo-relative, maybe-legal love interest. It might have been truer to the genre to have them all die as a group in a blaze of glory, but instead, they all go quietly, and it’s Keechie who saunters off into the sunset.
A Film that Belongs to No One
Still, what matters more to Altman and Tewskbury than bullets and heist plotting are these unbreakable bonds that must die and those which go on living. Granted, stalled action, romantic interludes and the 123-minute run time does allow for some excess interior moments that repeat themselves. But that, to Kael’s point, is what makes it exciting: there’s no telling where Altman will go next, and it’s hard to look away from these goofballs who we might laugh at until they surprise us with acts of kindness (Bowie swaddling the dog), depth (T-Dub’s speeches) or violence (Chicamaw’s murders). It’s an educated film which knows the cliches and makes every effort to avoid them, and a noble effort to subvert expectations for a popular genre that relies on speed, sex appeal and glitz. Altman, Tewskbury and their creative co-conspirators concocted a film that belongs to no one, it’s just a thief like them.
