Account Overdrawn

By JAY COCKS

BANK SHOT

Directed by GOWER CHAMPION Screenplay by WENDELL MAYES

For a while there, it looked very much as if every third movie made in America had something to do with busting into a well-armed fortress and making off with the swag. Now the heat is on a somewhat different theme--the catastrophe epic--and Bank Shot seems like the tag end of the old caper genre. It also looks much the worse for wear, and its struggle to wring a few guffaws out of trampled material is something no one should have to watch.

George C. Scott, perhaps hoping that no one will notice him, disinterestedly portrays a heist artist named Walter Upjohn Ballantine, who, in the words of an admirer, is the possessor of "the most spectacular rap sheet" in the FBI'S files. Among Ballantine's most highly regarded credits are shanghaiing an oil tanker in mid-ocean and stealing a million dollars in nickels from the U.S. mint. A crony named Al G. Karp, who looks like a softball that sweats, springs him from the pen to enlist his help on a new scheme: to break a bank called Mission Bell in suburban Los Angeles.

This is a curious proposition, as Ballantine quickly notices, because the bank has not been built yet. Karp wants to knock over its temporary home, a modest but well-guarded house trailer. This is no easy matter to begin with, but Ballantine and his five-thumbed cronies make it even harder than necessary. The gang includes a giggly jet-setter, an ex-FBI agent who is Al G. Karp's nephew, a screwy mother and her manic son, and a black safecracker who wants to use his cut of the profits to run for mayor of Anaheim.

This ill-assorted crew succeeds, barely, with the aid of many kind coincidences of plot and blasts of whimsy all lifted from a Donald E. Westlake novel and curdled in shipment. The actors perform with resolute lack of charm. Scott appears to be doing some sort of New Year's party imitation of Humphrey Bogart, an idea that consists entirely of petrifying his upper lip and pressing the dialogue out between the spaces in his teeth. The other members of the cast seem to have dropped by on their way to the unemployment office.

Near the beginning of the movie, it appears that Director Champion may have had some notion about making a comedy in which mechanical objects, not actors, are the real farceurs. He mounts elaborate scenes of amuck earthmovers and bizarre automobile chases along the L.A. freeway. But these devices quickly give way to the intractable mechanics of the plot--plan, get the money and split. If a novel approach to such a yarn exists, this exercise is not it. &183; Jay Cocks

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