
Sidney Lumet has directed numerous films that are viewed as cinema classics. 12 Angry Men, Dog Day Afternoon, Network and even Serpico are all highly regarded by film lovers and film critics alike and have all, except Serpico, received an Academy Award nomination. I recently discovered however that Lumet has directed many, many more films than the ones he is most famed for, most of which I've never heard of. The Anderson Tapes is one of those and by complete chance I happened to stumble across it on BBC1 the other night.
The Anderson Tapes is essentially a heist/caper movie. It follows an identical plot outline to many other caper movies, for example one of my favourite films, The Italian Job. We meet our leading character (in this case it is John 'Duke' Anderson played by Sean Connery) who has just been released from jail. This immediately tells us he has been on the wrongside of the law at least once. It is then revealed that he wants to commit another crime almost as soon as he is a free man. Said crime is revealed and described as the lead character seeks out his crew that will aid him throughout. The final act or two is dedicated to the crime itself. Familiar?
So Anderson has been released from prison after serving a ten year sentence. Whilst he was locked up there has been an increase in surveillance and survelliance techniques such as security cameras are now an established part of everyday life. Upon visiting an old lover, who lives in a swanky apartment, he comes up with the idea for a new crime. He and his crew will drive a van up to the building and rob all the high value goods from the other apartments in the building. Simple. However, unbeknowst to Anderson his associates are being monitored, each for different reasons and by different organizations but none of them can put the pieces together and anticipate the heist allowing it to go ahead and Anderson and his gang make their way through the various apartments, rounding up the inhabitants and robbing their goods. Eventually, the police are informed and they assemble a large presence outside the building and close in on the unsuspecting men who once alerted attempt to escape.

The Italian Job is the magnus opus of heist/caper films. It is excellent from start to finish. Sadly, The Anderson Tapes is not. The actually heist begins around the hour mark of a film that runs for about ninety five minutes and sadly Lumet forgot the make the first hour interesting. It's worse than uninteresting, it's mindnumbingly boring or perhaps that's a little harsh. We are introduced to our characters but once the heist begins it kind of felt like that first hour didn't really count or matter at all. This should come as a surprise because from the description of the plot above the plot does actually sound quite interesting. Things do improve however once the heist begins but even then the overall pacing was a little out. It was a little bit pedestrian at times, seemed to lack any urgency but at least the second half was a lot more watchable.
One thing I did like here was the flash forward scenes we see on numerous occasions during the heist. When Anderson's group enter the various luxourous apartment's and we are introuduced to the victims of their crime, the story suddenly cuts only a few hour ahead to the point at which the victim's are giving witness reports of the very scenes we were about to see before the leap ahead in time. They give their reports and then we go back to the actual heist scenes.
Unfortunately this positive note is tarnished somewhat by the horrible, ear splitting electronic score Lumet seems insistent on using in order to instigate each flash forward in time. I understand why he would have wanted to use it. After all, The Anderson Tapes main focus is on technology, from surveillance through to telecommuncations and back again. Right from the opening credits which uses an illuminous green L.E.D style font in telling us the name of the film it was obvious that Lumet wanted to orientate his heist movie around the subject of technology. We are constantly seeing some piece of equipment, be it CCTV, a computer screen, telephone or monitors. In fact, the police are alerted of the robbery by a hospital bed bound child who uses his amateur radio equipment to contact them and when Anderson is apprehended he immediately has a recording device thrusted in front of his face whilst being asked for a statement. Lumet presumably thought that an electronic bleeping noise fitted in with this theme, which perhaps it did, but was there any need to make it sound so ugly?
All in all The Anderson Tapes just isn't very interesting as pathetic an attempt at criticism that is. It feels a little half hearted and when there are so many better heist films out there Lumet's effort suffers and seems a little weak. And this is a disappointing because actually it's quite a nice idea for a film. I liked the over exagguration on surveillance but ultimately as a film I felt it lacked quality execution with little in the way of atmosphere. It does make me wonder how talented a director Lumet is. I'm astonished that only four years later, he would direct Dog Day Afternoon, a film that may not be a caper movie, but is however very similar in genre to The Anderson Tapes and about ten times better. He has directed 46 films yet I couldn't even name ten of them. Did Lumet just strike lucky throughout his career? Perhaps he did, but he certainly didn't strike lucky in 1971.
Rating: 5/10