It's hard to imagine a film like Straight Time being made today. For one thing, the narrative is allowed to develop and breathe. In a backyard scene, for example, with Dustin Hoffman, Harry Dean Stanton and Rita Taggart, the camera is still and quiet as the actors do their naturalistic best in a long unbroken take. Hoffman has rarely been better, to my mind, than here playing a career criminal with a mean streak. It is a controlled, modulated and utterly convincing performance. There isn't a clunker in the cast, from Stanton and Taggart to a sinister M. Emmet Walsh, Gary Busey, and then-newcomer Theresa Russell. What also makes the film work is the lack of exposition and motivation: two elements that are among the most tiresome aspects of much current cinema.
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