The Anderson Tapes (1971)
Directed by Sidney Lumet

Film Review

Not only was The Anderson Tapes one of the slickest heist movies of the 1970s, directed by Sidney Lumet with his customary aplomb and mania for detail, it was also highly prescient, for it presents a chilling vision of a world in which surveillance of the individual by government agencies and other, less reputable, bodies has become pandemic.  Made before the Watergate scandal broke in 1972, the film lit the coals of the paranoia that would flare up in the mid-1970s as President Nixon came under fire for alleged involvement in wiretapping activities.  Francis Ford Coppola's The Conversation (1974) was just one of many other films that fed on public anxiety over this frightening manifestation of the Big Brother society, where everything you said could potentially be heard or recorded without your knowledge.  Forty years on, the film is depressingly topical - how long will it be before all phone lines and internet activity is monitored by the security services, supposedly in our best interest..?

Whilst it has political undertones, The Anderson Tapes is first and foremost a heist movie, and a well-constructed and enjoyable one at that.  Having severed his ties once and for all with James Bond (or so he thought at the time...), Sean Connery appears revitalised as he throws himself into the role of a no-nonsense small-time hoodlum with big-time ambitions.  It could be argued that this is where Connery's real career began - the actor certainly showed far more confidence and a far greater range once he had put the 007 campery behind him.  The film was also an important milestone for Christopher Walken, who gets his first major role here, subtly sinister as Connery's young safe-cracking accomplice.

A precursor to Lumet's subsequent films Serpico (1973) and Dog Day Afternoon (1975), The Anderson Tapes doesn't quite have the muscle of these later crime dramas but it is a polished and absorbing production, its main distinguishing feature being Quincy Jones's eerie electronic score (which sounds like nothing on earth).  The film's ending is a multiple pile-up of anticipated ironies, the (inevitable) failure of the heist overshadowed by the failure of the myriad of surveillance activities taking place in the background.  The limited practical value of surveillance is brought home with a vengeance by the film's central irony, which is that, for all the monitoring to which Anderson is subjected, no one is able to pick up on the fact that he is preparing a major criminal operation.  Listening is one thing; hearing is an altogether finer art.

Film Synopsis

Once he has completed a ten year stretch in prison for burglary, John Anderson returns to his girlfriend Ingrid, who now resides in an upmarket New York apartment block, at the expense of her latest admirer. Anderson realises that by mounting a massive heist on the entire building he can make himself a very rich man, rich enough to retire in style.  He wastes no time hooking up with his former criminal associates and calls in a favour from a former Mafia boss to supply the outlay for the operation.  As he mounts the perfect robbery, Anderson is blissfully unaware that various government agencies are assiduously monitoring his activities to establish his links to organised crime syndicates...