A very good thriller in a very '70s style, with a languid style of storytelling punctuated by scintillating genre set pieces, a shambling, handsome-ugly hero, and lots of women without any clothes on.

Elliott Gould is a Toronto bank clerk, in love with co-worker Susannah York, who realises he's about to be stuck up by a department store Santa (Christopher Plummer) and decides to turn the situation to his advantage. Unfortunately his adversary turns out to be an absolute psychopath – shades of Charley Varrick – but Gould's dalliance with illegality seems to have woken him from his stupor, and sharpened his wits.

In plot terms it's reminiscent of Wait Until Dark and the later Hopscotch, it's thematically and stylistically…

The Silent Partner is a surprisingly grim film, considering a good portion of it is Elliot Gould swanning about the late 1970s Canada like an absolute boss.

I had never seen The Silent Partner before so I did not really know what to expect; so when it opens with a faintly comic bank robbery sequence that lasts about 20 minutes, with Christopher Plummer dressed as Santa and Elliot Gould flirting with fellow bank employee Susannah York, I assumed that I was in for a lighter crime film from the 1970s, with some great character work from Gould. However, the film takes quite a turn, when Plummer's character is more unveiled, with one of the most disturbing, and arguably out of…

I love a good bank heist thriller, and this one is a real change of pace. In fact its glacially paced, as the film constantly puts more influence on the characters and situation than the actual heist and it's all the better for it, even if it does feel very much like a TV movie. Anyway, the plot focuses on a boring bank clerk whose life is turned upside down when he happens to uncover a prospective bank heist and decides to interfere; taking the money for himself! The money in the film is shown more as an inconvenience than anything, marking The Silent Partner out as an anti-capital bank heist thriller. Money really has no value when not linked…

I remember it was a very hot end of August day back in 1977. I was 18, and I had just recently moved in with my girlfriend at the time. She and I worked together at Rogers Cable … her in the community channel as a playback operator, and me in the Hotel Pay Per view division doing the same job. For extra cash, she would occasionally work as an extra on movie shoots. She told me she was going to be working this day on a film that was being shot in the newly built Toronto Eaton Centre. The Eaton Centre was about halfway between our apartment and work. I was working the evening shift that day, and decided…

The 1970s Crime Season!

At this rate I think there is a good chance that Elliott Gould could become one of my favourite actors of all time based on his 1970s output alone. This is the second crime film I've seen with him in from that decade in the last couple of months, after The Long Goodbye, that turned out to be nothing like I expected.

I only had vague notions what The Silent Partner might be about anyway before I watched it - all I knew about it was that it has received almost totally positive reviews from everyone that has watched it on my activity page since I joined Letterboxd last year. I certainly wasn't expecting a cat-and-mouse…

Should have saved this one for Christmas as there is a lot of Christmas at the beginning before it suddenly shifts to mid-summer. The season shift is emblematic of some messy tone shifts that occur in this otherwise thoroughly entertaining bank robbery thriller. It's fairly light most of the time, but gets sleazier and gorier than you'd expect. It could be on purpose to make it a more memorable experience, but it wasn't always working for me. The set up is very cool. Elliot Gould puts in a great performance as the nerdy bank teller who takes a wild chance and Christopher Plummer plays a great unhinged creep. They introduce Canadian acting legend Christopher Plummer's character by having him beat…