Thieves Like Us

The performances are sublime, of course, but it's how Altman masterminds the moral conflicts at the core of the story that makes Thieves so powerful. [03 Jun 2007, p.32]

Remove all the crime-movie trappings—and there aren't that many, once Altman gets through with them—and the film would still endure for its surface alone, capturing the Depression-era South with brushstrokes of language, décor, and radio-plays on the soundtrack.

One of Robert Altman's lesser known gems, Thieves Like Us, brings Depression-era rural Mississippi to life with the story of three convicted killers on the lam from prison.

Like so much of his work, Robert Altman’s Thieves Like Us has to be approached with a certain amount of imagination. Some movies are content to offer us escapist experiences and hope we’ll be satisfied. But you can’t sink back and simply absorb an Altman film; he’s as concerned with style as subject, and his preoccupation isn’t with story or character, but with how he’s showing us his tale.

It is, perhaps, the most demanding of his recent films--but as always, the demands are justified and rewarding. [11 Feb 1974, p.74]

A well-done remake of They Live By Night that's slightly long but unusually free of Altman's customary indulgences.

A cool, at times unbearably objective look at the fragile relationship between two rather ordinary young people in Depression America (Keith Carradine and Shelley Duvall), who happen to rob banks and get shot at a lot.