THIEVES QUARTET
Reviewed By Peter Gloster
Rating: 8 out of 10
Only the bare technical essentials of "Thieve's Quartet" reside in the Internet Movie Database. Its a forgotten film that probably owes its place at my local video shop thanks to a sympathetic review from cult movie critic Jim Bob Briggs: his insistence that "Thieve's Quartet" is "Better than Reservoir Dogs" screams from the front cover. Jim Bob is lying through his teeth, but that's O.K, because its only a white lie, and white lies are forgivable when they rescue the likes of "Thieves Quartet" from oblivion.
Written and directed by Joe Chappelle, "Thieves Quartet" traces the fortunes of a group of criminals who embark on an audacious crime. Sure, that's a tad imprecise, but I wouldn't want to undermine Chapelle's intentions. "Thieves Quartet" unfolds slowly, unexpectedly. The gang's enigmatic statements and intentions are not immediately decipherable. This doesn't mean that Chapelle has crafted a headache-inducing labyrinth, "The Big Sleep" for the 90's (thank God!). The tiny suggestive riddles he poses are answered swiftly, as they successively appear, until a convincing and thoroughly tawdry picture has emerged. The audience has no choice but to become thoroughly engrossed in the workings of Chapelle's tantalisingly clever film.
Character and motivation is developed with a similar care to detail. The unlikely brains of the operation is Artie. Artie speaks the hippy lingo of his youth and exhibits a gentle eccentricity consistent with his resemblance to a balding Spalding Grey. A barman, Artie is eager to change his pitiful circumstances. His good friend Jimmy, a retired football player whose stuck working a car wash, is equally embittered by the cards life has dealt him. Chappelle opens his film with a subtle pre-credit sequence in which Jimmy tends to the needs of an everyday, and moderately annoying, customer. Nothing really happens, but the resentment and barely concealed fury is palpable. Artie's other two accomplices are a lot more volatile. Mike is an ex-cop eternally bitter about the money he lost on a football game Jimmy threw. In truth, he's more riled about Jimmy being black. In contrast, Art's girlfriend Jessie is perhaps a little too friendly towards Art's friends. She describes their relationship as a mutually respectful "arrangement". Art's take on this "arrangement" is less genteel, more direct. Her provocative behaviour encourages the advice "Just coz you ball half the civilised world don't mean you have to advertise it!". Internal conflict, wouldn't you know, soon threatens to scuttle the venture.
Chappelle adds an interesting dimension to his film by imbuing his main characters with social consciences. Jimmy and Art share an activist past and have outspoken views on society's injustices. They consider their criminal plans to be an extension of their political selves; to break the law is to strike out against a society that is criminaly unjust itself. But it isn't long before their reasonable musings on society's power-networks simply become a means to deny that they have any responsibility for their own fate or that of the people they encounter. Their activism degenerates into expedient nihilism. When the bodies of the innocent start piling up Art expresses scant regret and forsakes all blame: "I'm not God, man". Ultimately, Art is no more principled than Mike, who coolly states "I didn't make the world" after he "pops" a victim.
Apart from an impressive script with well-rounded characters, Chapelle's film is aided by its consistent style and edgy mood. As the title of the film suggests, music is integral to the feel of "Thieve's Quartet". Jazz, in particularly Miles Davis, fills Arts colourful conversation. This homage to jazz is an essential component of the film's mood and pace, not an airy pretension intended to telegraph the movie's sophistication. The music of Frank Zorn is expertly paced to the rhythm and emotion of a film that veers from careful reflection to feverish action.
"Thieve's Quartet" is not perfect. Its conclusion, for instance, doesn't really deliver the impact expected. But it is a sharp, original and stylish directorial debut with the grim integrity of a Jim Thompson novel. Go see it. You wouldn't want Jim Bob to look like a liar.
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