The Bank Shot (1974)
7/10
Literally heisting a bank
13 September 2015
Although I think George C. Scott is much better at drama than at comedy, he controls his normal intensity and does well with Bank Shot. Scott plays a master criminal who's on temporary hiatus in prison when his disbarred lawyer Sorrell Booke visits him with an idea for a heisting a bank.

Scott escapes with relative ease the penal institution run by Clifton James where he's incarcerated. Which gives James an obsession to catch him that he leaves the job and supervises the manhunt. But that's like the Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote.

Booke's only half right. He wants to rob a bank where a bank is temporarily housed in a mobile home. But Scott doesn't like his original plan. Let's heist the bank itself.

Some pretty funny gags are in Bank Shot and the crew Booke gives Scott would be closer to The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight. Funniest is his nephew Bob Balaban former FBI employee who apparently developed an admiration for the criminal lifestyle while employed there. A gambit you could never use while J. Edgar Hoover was running the show.

Best bit is the faux railroad impending crash at a crossing where James and security guards are forced to flee for their lives after the temporary bank has been heisted.

Scott also is of the opinion that women and his kind of work don't mix. With reluctance he has Joanne Cassidy who assisted with his escape as part of his team. The saltpeter in his prison diet have made him somewhat resistant to her beauty although Cassidy does her best to see it her way.

Scott and the cast do a wonderful job. James is really the funny one here. Scott plays it absolutely straight and let's the rest of the cast get the laughs. It works out well in Bank Shot.
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