If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

Blistering performances.

As some have said here, this is a sleeper that should not be missed.Is it true "once a criminal always a criminal"? This cast certainly works hard to answer this question.Hoffman, Busey, Stanton, Russell, and Walsh all give great performances to a tight, well-written script.There is no fluff here, just a straight shooting story.The soundtrack is excellent as well.If you're reading this around the beginning of February, 2018, you can watch it for free on the TCM app on your portable device.

Ulu Grosbard was one of the great American directors of the seventies and was certainly among the most underrated. He made "Straight Time" in 1978 and it's a terrific movie about crime and criminals though it's not a thriller nor even a heist movie. It's central character, Max Dembo, (a superb Dustin Hoffman), is a career criminal; crime is built into his DNA. When he's released from prison, where he's served 6 years for armed robbery, he at first seems repentant but it isn't long before he has a run-in with his unsympathetic and vindictive parole officer, (M. Emmett Walsh, excellent). From this point on, it's all downhill.Were this film in French you wouldn't think twice in saying it was a Jean-Pierre Melville picture. Like Melville's work this film deals in criminal mindsets; it's about the minutiae of crime. Dembo and his associates are professional criminals but they are messy and arrogant, more likely to die an early death or spend more time in prison than out of it.This is a beautifully acted, highly intelligent picture. Others in the cast include Theresa Russell, Harry Dean Stanton and Gary Busey, brilliant as a young would-be gangster not making much of a job of trying to stay on the straight and narrow. Adapted from the novel "No Beast so Fierce" by Edward Bunker, who also appears as another criminal, and beautifully photographed by Owen Roizman it really deserves to be better known.

Max Dembo (Dustin Hoffman) is released on parole and initially gets a minor reprimand from his parole officer Earl Frank (M Emmet Walsh)for breaching some of the terms of his parole. Frank informs Dembo that he needs to get a job and find a place to live and keep his nose clean and in return Frank will make sure that Dembo isn't sent to a 'halfway house'. Dembo is compliant in the early stages and does everything his parole officer asks him to do, but Dembo loses it when he ends up back in jail and turns on Frank after he learns that Frank wrongfully lands him in jail. This leads Dembo to go back to his old ways....Straight Time is a very slow film, but this is forgivable in the early stages as we see Dembo attempting to re-build his life after being let out on parole. What isn't forgivable is the fact that the film feels laborious and dull at almost every moment in its 108 minutes or so running time. His relationship with Jenny Mercer (Theresa Russell) was uninteresting and it didn't help that the couple had no chemistry and Russell's bland performance only made matters worse. I was also rather unimpressed by the lack of commentary that the film had to offer; more of an effort could have been made to explore corruption and failings within parole officers and The Department Of Corrections. Commentary on these things would almost certainly have made the film slightly more interesting, given it more depth and would have made it feel more complete. I think the worst aspect of this film is the dour serious tone that it adopts throughout its running time, the dull romance, a bunch of characters with all the charisma of a cabbage and a continual string of boring set-pieces. Predictably Straight Time is also hindered by lifeless direction and a pedestrian script.The film has other flaws such as why Jenny would choose to stay with Dembo even after she gets to know him and how Dembo escapes justice twice without a hint of anybody looking for him? To me though, these are things I can overlook in the name of entertainment, but there is nothing in the way of entertainment on offer here.

In Los Angeles, Max Dembo (Dustin Hoffman) is released from prison on parole reporting to strict parole officer Earl (M. Emmet Walsh). He's trying to go straight after a lifetime of thieving. At the employment agency, Jenny Mercer (Theresa Russell) gets him factory work. They go out on a date. Then Earl sends him back to jail. Blood test proves that he's clean and he's released. Earl picks him up to drive him to the halfway house. He hits Earl and escapes. With no way to go straight, he returns to his criminal past.Dustin Hoffman started as the director but had to hire Ulu Grosbard to take over. It allows to concentrate more on the acting. It does meander for the first half. It's a slow jog with some tense action later on. The directing is functional. It does have some interesting acting talents beside Hoffman. Theresa Russell is a fresh-faced newbie in this. A little tighter would make this even better.