Shaggy Crook Story

By JAY COCKS

CHARLEY VARRICK

Directed by DON SIEGEL

Screenplay by HOWARD RODMAN and DEAN RIESNER

Charley Varrick and Nadine used to have an airplane act. Nadine did a wing walk; Charley did some fancy stunting, acting drunk. When air circuses got scarce, Charley and Nadine set to supplementing their income by knocking over banks. Nothing big, just small Southwestern cheeseboxes in which local citizens stash their savings.

Purely by accident, Charley and Nadine finally score big in Tres Cruces, N. Mex. There are a couple of snags. Nadine (Jacqueline Scott), shot in the side during the getaway, dies. And the haul is too big. Charley winds up with two pouches stuffed with hundreds, a little over $750,000 worth. His partner, Harman (Andy Robinson), is ecstatic, but Charley (Walter Matthau) is worried. He knows that the only reason there would be money like that in Tres Cruces is if the bank is being used for a drop by the mob.

With the law looming on one side, the mob moving in on the other, Charley Varrick is the definitive outside man--or, as he bills himself, "the last of the independents." As he has shown previously in Dirty Harry, Coogan's Bluff and Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Director Don Siegel likes the peril such a situation can hold, as well as the sort of crusty dignity it can instill. Charley Varrick is different from much of his recent work, though, in that it is a little more leisurely, relaxed and sardonic.

The bank robbery that opens the film is staged and executed with vigorous economy; no flash, just straight, brutal action. There is also a spectacular and funny showdown at the end between a hired killer (Joe Don Baker) driving a car and Charley behind the controls of a crop duster. As the car and the plane bump, sideswipe and crash into one another, the scene becomes almost a parody of the recent excesses of the chase that were encouraged by The French Connection.

But Siegel is more concerned with the cunning and ironic measures that Varrick takes to ensure his comfort in his declining years. The movie concludes on the same image with which it opened, and with an especially crafty little twist. It should not diminish the viewer's surprise too much to say that Siegel takes a tangible joy in watching the last of the independents outfox the various organizations that have been causing him grief. Charley Varrick is a sort of backhanded testament to the wisdom that comes with experience.

As Varrick, Matthau preserves a certain feckless, shambling decorum. He dispenses his lines with the wry authority of a bartender adding a twist to a martini. There is also an especially sharp performance by Sheree North, portraying a shady photographer. The movie, overall, is smoothly customized entertainment, but Siegel has a weakness for gratuitous cruelty. A few scenes have a seaminess that goes beyond simple atmospherics. . Jay Cocks

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