Light Work

By Frank Rich

THE BRINK'S JOB

Directed by William Friedkin

Screenplay by Walon Green

There are, it seems, two William Friedkins. The famous William Friedkin, the one audiences love to hate, is the director of The French Connection, The Exorcist and Sorceror. He is a steely, at times brilliant cinematic technician who will heartlessly pull out any stop in the effort to make moviegoers squirm. The other, often forgotten William Friedkin is very different. He is a sweet fellow who once directed The Night They Raided Minsky's, a warm and eccentric tribute to the glory days of American vaudeville. With The Brink's Job, this second Friedkin returns, after an exceedingly long absence. It is a pleasure to have him back.

The Brink's Job is a crime movie that has been conceived in the antic spirit of a burlesque show. Working from Writer Noel Behn's account of the celebrated 1950 Boston heist, Friedkin and Screenwriter Walon Green have created a series of loopy blackout sketches that celebrate the lunacy of some lucky penny-ante crooks. Not all of the bits are funny, but even the flat jokes have an engagingly whimsical air. From the evocative opening shot of strippers smoking on a theater fire escape to a late Borscht Belt cameo by Sheldon Leonard as J. Edgar Hoover, The Brink's Job upholds the traditions of Weber and Fields, the Keystone Kops and Damon Runyon.

The movie follows its robber heroes from their early years as clumsy stickup men through their big score and its legal aftermath. There are some giddy set pieces, most notably a gummed-up bubble gum factory robbery, but it is the intimate moments and throwaway wisecracks that pay off best. This is due in no small part to Friedkin's cast, which is full of idiosyncratic comic actors who delight in playing amiable lowlife slobs.

Peter Falk, coming on like Groucho Marx doing an impersonation of Humphrey Bogart, makes the mangy most of his role as the gang's leader. A conniver with a heart of gold, he uses his loot to buy his wife (Gena Rowlands) a showy "100% muskrat" coat. As the gang's detonation expert, Warren Gates has a hell of a fine time: throughout the film he launches into deliriously obsessive speeches about imagined World War II combat adventures. The other principals, Peter Boyle, Paul Sorvino and Allen Goorwitz (the actor formerly known as Allen Gar field), all have their own amusing quirks. It's not their fault that Falk and Gates sometimes reduce them to underemployed straight men.

As he did in Minsky 's, Friedkin devotes great care to the ambience of Brink's.The production design by Dean Tavoularis (Godfather II) creates an almost dreamlike portrait of the ethnic tenements, greasy dives and teeming alleys that define the heroes' oldtime Boston underground. There is a jolly background score by Richard Rodney Bennett, as well as appropriate quotations from Walter Winchell and Movietone News. Devotees of Friedkin's most recent films may be shocked to discover that Brink's is utterly devoid of gore and brutality.

Yet, pleasant as The Brink's Job is, one does miss some of the energy that Friedkin brings to his meaner movies. This film's exposition is too slow by half; the Brink's robbery itself is amusing without ever really being suspenseful. Perhaps some day both William Friedkins will converge in a single movie. When and if that happens, this gifted but divided craftsman will finally become a major film maker. -- Frank Rich

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