Charley Varrick

The story of a man who robs the wrong bank. Charley is a former stunt pilot; he now flies a crop duster and robs banks with a small crew. They hit a small-town branch in New Mexico. The expected haul is a few thousand dollars. The figure in the bag is far higher. Charley grasps what that means at once: the money belongs to the mob and the bank is only a laundering point. Nobody is going to leave this robbery to the police. His partner wants to spend it; Charley is thinking about getting away alone. The man sent after them is a cold, methodical enforcer. What the film is interested in is not action but intelligence: Charley works by planning rather than shooting, and who knows what keeps shifting throughout. Walter Matthau plays Charley and Joe Don Baker the man on his trail. Don Siegel directed. The label the character gives himself became the film's British title: the last of the independents. One of the genre's under-discussed good examples for anyone who likes 1970s crime films and cool-headed protagonists. For a viewer expecting showy action, the film builds slowly and produces its tension by waiting rather than firing.