THE THIEF WHO CAME TO DINNER

By JAY COCKS

Directed by BUD YORKIN Screenplay by WALTER HILL

There are enough moments of small pleasure in this muddled enterprise to give it a kind of ruptured vitality. Director Yorkin's movies, like Start the Revolution Without Me, are chipper but erratic even at their best. Thief vacillates between unhurried suspense and the kind of comedy that is so subdued it seems almost cursory. Yorkin's genially offhand style makes the movie look a little like a TV pilot that got out of control.

Something about TV work--the necessary speed or the emphasis on packaging--fosters inconsistency and irresolution. Yorkin and his partner Norman Lear (TIME cover, Sept. 25) take a little more than the usual care with their shows (All in the Family, Sanford and Son, Maude), especially in the areas of production and casting. Not surprisingly, these are the sources of most that is winning in Thief.

Ryan O'Neal appears as a computer programmer in Houston who adds dash to his dreary life by becoming a cat burglar, sort of a country cousin to Cary Grant in To Catch a Thief. Fortunately, O'Neal does not try to impersonate Grant, as he did in What's Up, Doc?, but instead scuffs through the part with his own vagrant charm. He is given a girl friend, played by Jacqueline Bisset, one of the few young actresses who really can get by on looks alone; and a nemesis, Warren Gates, an actor who can always be trusted to shape a full characterization even from some sketchy motivation and a few scraps of dialogue.

The supporting players all have moments of sly character comedy. Jill Clayburgh is splendid as O'Neal's exwife, an inanely flamboyant provincial actress passing through Houston in a touring company of Plaza Suite, who resolves to give her former spouse another tumble when she gets word of his criminal exploits. As a big businessman in the process of being blackmailed by O'Neal, Charles Cioffi, who appeared as the,villain in Klute and the beleaguered cop in Shaft, continues to display a chameleon-like facility. Austin Pendelton as a chess master driven to fits of impotent violence by O'Neal's computerized skill at the game, Ned Beatty as a fast-talking fence and rabid family man ("My boys are gonna grow up goddam fine or I'm gonna know the reason why!"), and Gregory Sierra as a punchy Mexican boxer and amateur booster--all lavish the kind of care on their roles that goes beyond the call of duty and script.

Yorkin was also wily enough to avail himself of the services of Production Designer Polly Platt, whose work, here as elsewhere, shows the kind of visual invention that suggests she might consider giving up the buttressing of other people's movies so she could start doing her own.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.