The Silent Partner

Elliott Gould makes for an unlikely bank-teller who wears natty three piece suits and drives a yellow sports car but keeps tropical fish in this misogynistic crime-thriller adapted from Danish author Anders Bodelsen's book, 'Think Of A Number' that had already been filmed in Danish in 1969.

Christopher Plummer plays a sadistic bank robber who gets set up by Gould’s crafty teller who lets him get away with a couple of grand whilst he pockets $48,000 for himself. Even in 1977 that doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of money and one of the film’s problems is that it hardly seems to merit what Gould endures for it, admittedly without batting an eyelid.

It’s an odd film, in some ways reminiscent of Ealing crime comedies of the 1950s but with a more graphically violent twist. It is essentially a low-to-mid-budget genre piece directed with energy but little plausibility and with some interesting names involved such as scriptwriter Curtis Hanson, who went on to a considerable career as a director, notably with L.A.Confidential in 1997, an original score by Oscar Petersen, a small role for John Candy and an oddly cast Susannah York who comes off second best all round to a beautiful unknown Céline Lomez who plays Plummer’s squeeze.

 

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