Watch The Anderson Tapes For Free

Wow! What a bizarre film! Unfortunately the few funny moments there were were quite overshadowed by it's completely weird and random vibe throughout.

Yo, there's no way for me to review this film without saying, take your *insert ethnicity + "ass" here* to see this film,like now. You have to see it in order to know what you're really messing with.

Unshakable, witty and deeply felt, the film will be paying emotional dividends for a long, long time.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

This film was a joy to watch. On the surface it seems like a comedic heist film with Sean Connery at his scornful and provocative best. He compares picking safe's to rape and pulls women's hairs. His monologue at the beginning of the film was very entertaining. Martin Balsam sexes it up in an intense performance as a homosexual. A young Christopher Walken struts around in his film debut. I am not a big fan of Dyan Cannon. So the film could have used a sexier heroine. The film is also about the increasing use of surveillance in American society during the 60s and the 70s. Though the dark ending which seems to emphasize surveillance as one of the film's major themes was not that convincing. Quincy Jones catchy title score gets the film off to a great start. The editing deserves special mention - the way they cut from the heist scenes to the hostages talking to the police was special. I think Spike Lee might have been inspired by The Anderson Tapes when he edited The Inside Man. This film is cruelly underrated at 6.4. My 9 rating should help it on its way up.

Duke Anderson (Sean Connery) is an unrepentant thief just released from prison after 9 years. He reconnects with his old girlfriend Ingrid (Dyan Cannon) living in a rich apartment building. He plans to rob the entire building on Labor Day weekend. What he doesn't know is that there is surveillance everywhere, and his crew is surrounded.This director Sidney Lumet movie is trying to say that we're being monitored all the time. I don't think it was effectively inserted into this basic heist movie. I think the movie works a lot better without this over the top aspect. I also didn't like the clinky annoying sound effects, or the flash forward inserts. They keep breaking up any tension from the heist and the cops surrounding the building. It could have been a lot better.

I expected more from this film, influenced, I guess, by my TV Guide which gave it a rating of three and a half out of four. It was directed by Sidney Lumet, who has done some fine New York City stories -- "Serpico", "The Pawnbroker" -- and the cast includes people like Sean Connery, Martin Balsam, and Christopher Walken. How could it go wrong? Well, it doesn't go wrong -- exactly. The first half, though, looks a lot like an ordinary caper movie. Connery is just out of jail and assembles and finances a handful of experts to rob an entire high-end apartment house of every valuable in every flat.Lumet and his writers have even inserted a bit of humor, largely based on Martin Balsam's gay interior decorator, and Balsam is great in the role. He's given a couple of witty lines and moues that never quite go over the top, though they approach it. Ralph Meeker as Delaney, the police captain in charge, really DOES go over the top with his machine-processed working-class New York accent. There's ironic humor, too, in the incremental revelation that three of the conspirators are being covertly watched by three independent law-enforcement agencies, none of whom know about the others: Walken because the Narcs are interested in him, the black driver because he's a Black Panther, and the mobster who is providing the money because he's -- well, he's Italian. Not that the records play any part in the story, which is all the more reason for a talented guy like Quincy Jones to have avoided all those screeching electronic noises on the sound track.But Lumet is a tragedian at heart. He ends few of his movies happily, a tendency he shares with some other directors and writers, like Roman Polanski and Stephen King. The last half of the film has the robbery crew hurrying about their business in the apartment house, not realizing the crime has already been detected, the street sealed off by police, and a Special Tactical Police Unit (or whatever it's called) is already rappelling down the side of the edifice. There is a climactic shoot out in which people are realistically killed.Lumet has directed this uncertain story with noticeable skill. He intercuts long scenes of the preparation and execution of the robbery with briefer scenes of witnesses describing that happened to them. There are also cuts to the post-crime events involving police on the street. At first we're unsure of what's going on in the background except that we notice a lot of bustle. With each cut it becomes increasingly clear that what's going on is that dead bodies are being removed and put into an ambulance, so the audience only gradually becomes aware of the fact that the ending is going to be melancholy.But in asking the viewer to make the leap from the assembly of a comic caper crew into tragedy, Lumet is asking a lot. Let me put it this way: Sean Connery is not the kind of actor who should be shot in the back and die.

Having finished with James Bond Sean Connery plays a very different character here; he is John 'Duke' Anderson a burglar who upon being released from prison decides to burgle the apartment block where his girl friend lives; not just a single apartment; every single one! For this he will need a team; including a specialist driver, safe cracker and even somebody to reconnoitre the building before hand to identify everything of value. He will also need money for upfront expenses so approaches the Mob; they agree to finance the operation on condition that Anderson takes one of their men with him... and kills him! What he doesn't realise is that just about everybody he is dealing with is under some form of surveillance. Surprisingly the people listening in don't do anything with what they hear as none of them has the full picture and the robbery goes ahead as planned... well almost as planned; they didn't count on a disabled boy sending out a message on a ham radio so as the thieves work their way through the apartment the police prepare to make their move.This is very much a seventies movie with its jazz inspired music, strange electronic sounds and the sense that just about everybody is being spied on by somebody. Connery does a good job as Anderson; the film is also notable for the first film performance from Christopher Walken and the last film performance from Margaret Hamilton, best known as the Wicked Witch of the West from 'The Wizard of Oz'. The preparation for the robbery is never boring and when it actually goes ahead things get fairly exciting; especially when we know the cops are there in force but the robbers have no idea. The action, when it comes, is fairly low key which makes it more believable; no doubt if it was made today there would be shootouts with the cops and perhaps a few CGI explosions... thankfully that sort of thing didn't happen in thrillers then; keeping it real was more important than lots of excitement. This may not be a classic but it is still worth watching if you are a fan of any of the stars or enjoy crime capers.