Word: friedkins
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Brink's Job this legend is played for all it's worth--even more than it's worth. Director William Friedkin is so intent on showing the lovable underdogs who made it big that he bogs the tale down...
This glossing over isn't really a bad thing. The Brink's legend has entertained people for more than 20 years now, and there's no reason to try to do anything more than that with the movie. Friedkin was not even a bad choice for the man to do it. Although he has a reputation from The Exorcist and The French Connection as a calculating director who stops at nothing to wrench an audience's guts, he also has done this sort of nostalgic tribute before. The Night They Raided Minsky's was a rollicking adventure about vaudeville...
...years as clumsy stickup men through their big score and its legal aftermath. There are some giddy set pieces, most notably a gummed-up bubble gum factory robbery, but it is the intimate moments and throwaway wisecracks that pay off best. This is due in no small part to Friedkin's cast, which is full of idiosyncratic comic actors who delight in playing amiable lowlife slobs...
...Minsky 's, Friedkin devotes great care to the ambience of Brink's.The production design by Dean Tavoularis (Godfather II) creates an almost dreamlike portrait of the ethnic tenements, greasy dives and teeming alleys that define the heroes' oldtime Boston underground. There is a jolly background score by Richard Rodney Bennett, as well as appropriate quotations from Walter Winchell and Movietone News. Devotees of Friedkin's most recent films may be shocked to discover that Brink's is utterly devoid of gore and brutality...
...pleasant as The Brink's Job is, one does miss some of the energy that Friedkin brings to his meaner movies. This film's exposition is too slow by half; the Brink's robbery itself is amusing without ever really being suspenseful. Perhaps some day both William Friedkins will converge in a single movie. When and if that happens, this gifted but divided craftsman will finally become a major film maker. - Frank Rich