Popular reviews

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  Review by Colin the dude ★★★★★ 5

  Dustin Hoffman, Harry Dean Stanton and Gary Busey get into a car to go rob a jewelry store. Right there, you owe it to yourself to see Straight Time. But it's also a gripping genre piece and gut-punching character study both at the same time, smack dab in the 70s golden age of paranoid crime pictures. If you consider yourself an avid fan of heist movies about volatile criminals, if Reservoir Dogs is your cup of tea, if you've seen and liked The Driver or Dog Day Afternoon, and you haven't seen or heard of Straight Time, then you're in for one of the more under-appreciated highlights in the genre and you should familiarize yourself with it, pronto.

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  Review by Josh Lewis ★★★★

  a very tragic and considered crime drama that as others have mentioned feels in some respects like the blueprint for the intelligent, fatalistic ex-con humanity and existentialism of michael mann. (was not surprised to learn he did an uncredited draft, the romantic scenes especially are dripping with his sensitive detail about prison life and the kinds of attitudes necessary to adopt to survive it.) however there's an interesting quality to this that could've only come out of this period of the 70s, where mann would eventually drench this material in impressionistic style this has a hard and blunt sense of almost resignation that's served well by French Connection and Taking of Pelham One Two Three cinematographer owen roizman's blunt, grimy…

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  Review by theriverjordan ★★★★ 23

  “Straight Time” simmers the ingredients of control and repression into a time bomb eventually ignited by the failure of a necessary delusion. 

  Dustin Hoffman stars in the film as a former convict ground down into a point past dust. He is granted not a speck of dignity - even as he tries to do nothing more ambitious than merely exist. 

  “Straight” makes a fascinating companion piece to Hoffman’s 1971 role in Peckinpah’s “Straw Dogs.” Where his milquetoast of a man in the earlier work explodes under the threat of perceived emasculation, here - he breaks by failure to mimic the pantomime of respectful society. 

  It is, of course, the latter of those two parts who steals empathy, though perhaps not…

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  Review by Branson Reese 1

  Just some absolutely beautiful 70s seediness. Stacked with excellent, understated performances, including one of the few correct usages of Busey. But the game ball has gotta go to M. Emmet Walsh as a petty, low status parole officer. He’s pathetic and never not sweating. He’s so close to being a full on clown but he knows you almost feel bad for him and weaponizes it. Absolute leech. Completely nefarious. Hoffman’s great and Harry Dean Stanton is never anything less than stellar but Walsh is really playing a game only a few other actors can even glance at. 

  I usually try to make these reviews funnier but there’s a lot going on these days and I’ve been getting the sense that the people on here who burst into flames when you try to have any fun have been growing in number. Not sure why that is. Probably a politics thing.

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  Review by nathaxnne [hiatus: blast injury] ★★★½ 11

  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,…

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  Review by Blake Bergman "Various Spaghetti" ★★★★★

  "Straight Time" is a 1978 crime drama directed by Ulu Grosbard. Starring Dustin Hoffman in a portion of his career in which he kept on turning out stellar and dramatic roles, "Straight Time" easily fits within the rest of Hoffman's films in good company as a work of excellent caliber of understanding the pressures of the human condition when it is pushed to its extremes or cast outside of the system. Hoffman's character of Max Dembo is not really given a platform to succeed in the first place but still obviously has a necessity to survive anyway that he can. As such, the actions of the film seem to come by way of necessity, but it's not like Max didn't…

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  Review by Timcop ★★★★★ 1

  Dustin Hoffman is absolutely mesmerizing in this, what might just be his best role. Such an amazingly realistic depiction of crime and prison life, STRAIGHT TIME immediately rockets up near the top of the best crime films I've ever seen. Pretty ungodly in its harrowing intensity, with Theresa Russell, Harry Dean Stanton and Gary Busey all absolutely bringing it. M Emmett Walsh plays a total prick like nobody's business, and the scene where Dustin Hoffman makes an unbelievable choice that affects the outcome of the rest of the movie is so shocking, I'm not even sure Walsh knew what was going to happen despite having read the script. Fucking phenomenal.

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  Review by Joe Lynch ★★★½ 1

  Can’t Believe it’s taken me this long to see Hoffman doing Bunker with one of the most insane casts. Seriously there’s a scene where Dustin, a young Kathy Bates, Gary Busey and a very young Jake Busey all at a kitchen table. 
  Equally funny and sad.

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  Review by Justin LaLiberty ★★★★½ 1

  the type of sincere character work - especially when the character alternates between affable loser and hardened criminal - that could only come out of American cinema of the 70s; it’s telling that Michael Mann worked on this script initially (and is uncredited here) as Hoffman’s character is the type of complicated masculinity that would become the blueprint for nearly all of Mann’s leading men decades later

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  Review by 📀 Cammmalot 📀 ★★★★★ 5

  You’re a thief, man. Why don’t you be a thief?

  Is this Dustin Hoffman’s lost masterpiece?!?

  Hoffman co-directed it and turns in one of his best performances, but apparently there was a dust up and a lawsuit with the studio over overages and final cut, which I guess is why it was buried.

  Just listen to the rest of this cast: You’ve got a fantastic Harry Dean Stanton performance where he’s actually playing the calm thinking convict...if you can believe that!?! Gary Busey plays the worst kind of best friend and M. Emmet Walsh nails it as the patronizing power hungry parole officer.

  To top it all off this was co-written by Edward Bunker and based on his novel, “No…

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  Review by Dizzle_Sizzle ★★★★ 5

  "I don't have an attitude. Can you tell me the kind of attitude you want me to have?"

  Posits that repeatedly sprung ex-cons can't and won't hack it in the outside world, whether for lack of a fair shake or sheer inability (refusal) to adapt as staying straight means to do so for yourself in the only manner you know. Max is a man that'll never get the benefit of the doubt on account of how a repeat offender is viewed and apt to operate on behalf of their tried and true skill set, yet there exists a newfound earnestness about him as he glimpses life on the heavily surveilled alternative that is honest living. A blossoming romance is predicated…

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  Review by Patrick ★★★★½

  Roger Ebert had a rule that stated “no movie featuring either M. Emmett Walsh or Harry Dean Stanton in a supporting role could be altogether bad.” This movie has both of them! And Dustin Hoffman! And Gary Busey! And like a 5 year old Jake Busey! And like a 25 year old Kathy Bates! 

  Not sure why this doesn’t get mentioned with the other great 70s antihero classics, it’s just terrific. And for fans of Raising Arizona (i.e. people of taste), you’ll be AMAZED by how much the Coens took from this, right down to Nicolas Cage’s moustache n’ mutton chops look.