Straight Time is probably the grottiest, seediest and low-rent-est Southern California has ever looked on film. Like there are bedbugs and/or lice on the print itself, everything covered in a dusty patina of nicotine, sweat and air pollution. The post-prison-release efforts at having a normal job, complying with a parole officer, keeping regular hours are some of the most oppressive time I have ever spent watching a movie, so when those efforts start to not work out so well, the promise of a life of crime seems self-evident, if still way grotty and seedy. This movie is adapted in part by Edward Bunker from his autobiographically-informed novel No Beast So Fierce. He also shares a memorable scene with Dustin Hoffman,…

Amazing. I had never heard of this film or its director Ulu Grosbard before. Or Grosbard - so I thought, but as it turned out I have seen Falling in Love with De Niro and Streep without paying much attention to who directed it.

Anyway. This film was a great, positive surprise. Max (Hoffman) is a small-time thief who is released from prison after doing a six year accumulated sentence for several burglaries. He is released into the hands of a parole officer (Walsh), who turns out to be a real scumbag. However, Max manages to find both adequate housing, a job and even a girlfriend (Russell) in very short time, the latter being the one who finds him his…

For its first act 'Straight Time' builds very deliberately, in true 70s fashion. The acting is good enough to get you vibing on that old-school wavelength and going along for the ride though, and periodically things happen like long-haired Gary Busey showing up, just to let you know that your patience is soon going to be rewarded. And rewarded it is. Once this thing starts building tension and picking up steam it never stops. By the time the end credits roll you really feel like you've been through an ordeal.

Hoffman's character is a jittery one who's never able to chill out or stop while he's ahead. He always has to push things one step too far, and the tension…

recidivism and the fabric of its circles//
crime is a disease, an addiction, an honest living but its only relative stability is how its reflexxted through the prism of the individual and what colour that light is from the torch of society and the people sanctioned to care for you.
time is everything.

time is prison.
time is a prison.
the seconds over spilled during a job.
the seconds on the hand of a watch, the gift for the one you love.

theres an exxtended second where Hoffman and Russell look at each other and in that moment of quiet acting, you know that love and a saddened fate are coalesced at once.

not to mention Gary Busey/Harry Dean Stanton/J.…

Straight Time is a well rounded out drama with a terrific cast of actors headed by Dustin Hoffman who is well cast in the part he plays. Here, he plays a con who tries to go straight and he brings a certain angle to the role that makes it convincing. The story is well written and the film has a good pace that has plenty of things going for it to make this a riveting drama from the moment it starts. What makes Straight Time such a compelling feature is that it feels real, raw and tense. This is a superb film that has several solid performances opposite Hoffman, and each actor brings something good to the screen that make…

Damn. This is of its time. It makes me miss rotary phones and pay phones and crummy brown typewriters. And would you LOOK at baby-faced Kathy Bates? Goddamn. Okay. I'm over it. Now... on to the film:

It's sooo 1970s for a film to take the side of a relatively small-time crook like Max (Dustin Hoffman) and show how the system has fucked him over. And Max is not a straight arrow. He's not squeaky clean by any stretch. But we're still pretty solidly in his corner.

M. Emmet Walsh plays Earl Frank, Max's enormous dickhead parole officer on a power trip. Frank makes sure Max doesn't have any real control over his life once he gets out of prison,…