The Great Coup (1973)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Movie
German title The big coup
Original title Charley Varrick
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 1973
length 111 minutes
Age rating FSK 18 (when published), then 16
Rod
Director Don Siegel
script John Reese (book)
Dean Riesner
Howard Rodman
production Don Siegel
music Lalo Schifrin
camera Michael Butler
cut Frank Morriss
occupation

The big coup is a 1973 thriller by Don Siegel based on the novel "The Looters" by John Reese . The film was released by Universal Pictures on October 19, 1973 in US cinemas. Walter Matthau received the British Academy Film Award for Best Actor in 1974 for this film . Frank Morriss was nominated for the same award in the Best Screenplay category.

action

Charley Varrick, a former aerobatic pilot , is fed up with his unprofitable business as a freelance pest fighter. Together with his wife Nadine and two other accomplices, he has repeatedly raided smaller banks. Since the loot was only a few thousand US dollars, the interest of the sheriff and the public prosecutor's office in clearing up the robberies usually died down quickly.

When Charley and Nadine rob a bank in New Mexico with Al and the somewhat inexperienced Harman Sullivan , the unexpected happens: Al and a security guard from the bank are shot, Charley's wife shoots two police officers, is shot herself and dies a short time later from her injuries . The two surviving robbers burn the getaway car with Nadine's corpse; Charley pulls the wedding ring from Nadine's finger, but learns in the news that the corpse should be identified based on the dental status . He breaks into the local dentist, steals Nadine's file, but also takes out his data sheet and instead puts Harman's x-rays into it. The booty is more than 750,000  US dollars , but since declared the bank in the news, the amount of the stolen money amounts to only $ 2,000, suspects Charley that it is the prey is black money the Cosa Nostra is that in the small bank was temporarily stored. He therefore urges extreme caution, but the carefree Harman underestimates the explosiveness of the situation in which both of them find themselves from then on: He dreams of being able to spend the money with full hands.

The sadistic assassin Molly is hired by the syndicate to target the bank robbers. Since the responsible mafia bosses refuse to believe in "coincidences", they suspect an informant in the cooperating bank. Bank president Maynard Boyle tells branch manager Young that the Mafia will hold them both responsible for the money disappearing. Young, afraid of torture, shoots himself.

Meanwhile, Charley is preparing to leave the country with Harman. He orders passports from a photographer who also runs a forgery workshop. The gun shop owner who sold Charley the photographer's address contacts the underworld and is forced by Molly to divulge his knowledge. Molly learns the contact address provided by Charley from the photographer and waits for Charlie at her place, but he does not appear on the specified midnight date. Molly then goes to Charley's trailer in a trailer park . The naive Harman is there alone. At first he has concerns, but eventually opens the door to the stranger - contrary to Charley's previous warnings. Molly tries to force the hiding place of the loot and the whereabouts of Charley out of Harman; however, Harman does not know either. Molly beats him to death and leaves the body in the trailer. There she finds Charley.

In order to forestall further reenactments, Charley contacts Boyle through his secretary for the purpose of a money return: This could only take place in a junkyard if Boyle appears alone. Charley sees Molly's car while flying over the junkyard, but lands his plane anyway. He hugs Boyle jovially and makes Molly think that Boyle is an accomplice of his. Molly kills Boyle with his car, while Charley boards his plane and apparently tries to escape with it. After a lengthy chase across the property, Charley deliberately overturns and remains lying upside down. Molly promises to free him if he tells him the location of the prey. Charley says the money is in the trunk of a junk car nearby. When Molly opens the trunk, a bomb explodes , killing him. In the trunk there is also the body of Harman in a suit by Charley with his watch and wedding ring as well as the money bags from the bank. Charley loads the booty from the plane into a hidden parked car, throws some banknotes along with his aviator outfit into the burning trunk and drives away.

production

All of the locations for the outdoor shots were in Nevada - the bank in Genoa, the trailer park near Dayton , the small-town scenes with the photographer's apartment in Gardnerville, the big-city scenes in Reno. The final scene at the junkyard was filmed near Mustang Ranch, a brothel east of Reno (owner Joe Conforte appears as himself in a cameo ).

The working title "The Last of the Independents", the ironic name that Charley Varrick chose as the motto for his company sign, was favored by Don Siegel as the official title, but changed against his will by Universal Studio Boss Lew Wasserman .

Don Siegel makes a brief cameo where he plays table tennis with an Asian mob boss .

Trivia

  • The aircraft that Matthau flew in the final scene had a spraying accident three years later and the pilot died.
  • Andrew Robinson (in the film Harman) played a psychopathic killer himself in Don Siegel's first Dirty Harry film .
  • The warning from Boyle to the bank branch manager that he would be stripped naked and processed with wire cutters and a blowtorch ("a blow torch and a pair of pliers") is used again by Quentin Tarantino, slightly modified in Pulp Fiction .
  • Walter Matthau didn't like the film at all, despite the awards he received for it.

criticism

"This film has some of the best bits of black humor and suspense in Siegel's career."

- Chicago Tribune

“Sober, almost disinterested, the film follows Charley Varrick step by step, but every approach to the inner life is refused. The sentimentality of the prehistory provided by the script is immediately suffocated by the motionlessness of the lizard-like hero. This contrast is the main attraction of the film: Varrick's most surprising cunning meets extreme equanimity, both in the character and in the staging. "

- Ekkehard Knörer in jump-cut

"There is a lot of violence in 'The Great Coup' [...] But the violence is not a disruptive image of any recognizable real world, but rather an essential part of the choreography of the action melodrama in an illusory world."

- Vincent Canby in the New York Times

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Locations on IMDb.com
  2. ↑ George Anastasia; Glen Macnow: The ultimate book of gangster movies. Featuring the 100 greatest gangster films of all time, Running Press, Philadelphia 2011, ISBN 978-0-7624-4154-9 , p. 102
  3. ↑ George Anastasia; Glen Macnow: The ultimate book of gangster movies. Featuring the 100 greatest gangster films of all time, Running Press, Philadelphia 2011, ISBN 978-0-7624-4154-9 , p. 102
  4. ↑ Chicago Tribune, September 10, 2000
  5. ↑ jump-cut.de
  6. ^ New York Times, October 20, 1973