Although I think George C. Scott is much better at drama than at comedy, he controls his normal intensity and does well with Bank Shot. Scott plays a master criminal who's on temporary hiatus in prison when his disbarred lawyer Sorrell Booke visits him with an idea for a heisting a bank.Scott escapes with relative ease the penal institution run by Clifton James where he's incarcerated. Which gives James an obsession to catch him that he leaves the job and supervises the manhunt. But that's like the Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote.Booke's only half right. He wants to rob a bank where a bank is temporarily housed in a mobile home. But Scott doesn't like his original plan. Let's heist the bank itself.Some pretty funny gags are in Bank Shot and the crew Booke gives Scott would be closer to The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight. Funniest is his nephew Bob Balaban former FBI employee who apparently developed an admiration for the criminal lifestyle while employed there. A gambit you could never use while J. Edgar Hoover was running the show.Best bit is the faux railroad impending crash at a crossing where James and security guards are forced to flee for their lives after the temporary bank has been heisted.Scott also is of the opinion that women and his kind of work don't mix. With reluctance he has Joanne Cassidy who assisted with his escape as part of his team. The saltpeter in his prison diet have made him somewhat resistant to her beauty although Cassidy does her best to see it her way.Scott and the cast do a wonderful job. James is really the funny one here. Scott plays it absolutely straight and let's the rest of the cast get the laughs. It works out well in Bank Shot.

"The Bank Shot" is a pleasant enough little film with a decent cast that you've seen in many other movies and television episodes. George C. Scott is a terrific actor. Three distinct movies that show his broad acting range (in my opinion) are "Anatomy Of A Murder", "Patton", and "The Bank Shot." I felt he handled the comedy in this movie very well. The novel that this was taken from (by Donald Westlake) is quite funny as are most of his books. Two other films based on Westlake's novels, "The Hot Rock" & "Cops And Robbers" were filmed in the same era and are equally funny. Joanna Cassidy was bubbly and bright and very attractive (still is, too!). Sorrell Booke was a treat and got to ham it up the most as Ballentine's "lawyer", Al G. Karp. By the way, speaking of ham, did anyone else catch that the character name Hermann X (portrayed by Frank McRae) sounds an awful lot like "ham & eggs?" Clifton James narration was quite humorous especially during the opening scenes. G. Wood was very good in M.A.S.H (and M*A*S*H--television) and plays Streiger's assistant quite ably. Overall, an innocuous flick with humor, slapstick and hardly any cursing so watch it with the family. Most enjoyable and worth viewing for all the actors you know and love.

8 out of 10 Completely wacky story involving seven nutty people who decide to rob a bank that is inside a mobile home. They do so by stealing the entire building only to find that trying to open the safe is even tougher. This is the type of comedy that works because although it is built around one gimmick it doesn't just stay dependent on it. Everything is offbeat here. It really is just one laugh after another and it comes at a extremely fast pace. Nearly every scene is diverting and some of it even memorable. It shows a good handle on the absurd with just the right balance of the irreverent particularly with the police and other authority figures. Scott's escape from his prison camp is good example of all these ingredients. He uses a stolen bulldozer to crash through the gate while the police chief tries to 'chase him down' while driving nothing more than a flimsy little golf cart. It all makes for one of the most unique chase sequences you will ever see. Of course the actual heist of the bank building is still the best. The innumerable and frustrating attempts at trying to open a most difficult safe comes in at a close second. There are also a lot of other fun ironic twists. Scott is not necessarily the best person for the part of the cunning and audacious criminal mastermind. He looks very old, grouchy, and tired here. He has your grandfathers big bushy eyebrows and talks with a very strange lisp. Yet he is also at his crumudgeon best and the film makes the most of it. Cassidy with her infectious laugh and very sunny disposition makes for a terrific counterpart. James though probably stands out the most in a over the top caricature of the hard nosed police sergeant. It's the best role of his career and a part he looks to have been born to play. If the film has any faults it is the fact that it tends to be too one dimensionally silly and at points seems almost cartoonish. A little more tension here and there wouldn't have hurt. It also goes by way too fast and the ending isn't very satisfying. Still this is a solid comedy that should appeal to anyone with a good sense of humor. It is also fun for the whole family.

Adapted from the Donald Westlake novel of the same title "The Bank Shot" stars George C. Scott and a very young Joanna Cassidy (Zora, the snake-dancing replicant of "Blade Runner" fame). A farcical entry in the caper genre whose hook is a plan to steal a bank (mind you, not rob the bank, but to heist, not to mention hoist, the very structure itself), the film exhibits the dry humor, zany sight gags, and whimsical plot twists characteristic of post-Alec Guinness and "Tom Jones" British cinematic comedy.As a 1974 Hollywood release, "The Bank Shot" was somewhat ahead of its time, preceding both the Monty Python invasion and the American popularity of films like "A Fish Called Wanda." This film is nowhere near as successful as its more famous British counterparts, but it does have its moments and, viewed from a contemporary perspective, an appealing aura of mid-'70s nostalgia replete with long-haired disguises, peace signs, garish fashion, and a plot-central splashing of hot pink paint. Like "Tom Jones" but to a far lesser degree, the film's whimsy manifests itself in its visual an aural techniques not only in its storyline. Some instances include a stunning silhouette sequence that plays like a moving shadow box, an insistently self-conscious (and ultimately annoying) use of voice-over narration, and several outrageously choreographed chase scenes (one involving a golf cart and a caterpillar tractor and another in which everyone - even a pedestrian bystander - is moving backwards were memorably wacky).Befittingly, the caper gang in "The Bank Shot" is a mixed bag of nut cases, some more effectively cast than others. In a minor role so early in his career that the credits still list him as "Robert," the always interesting-to-watch Bob Balaban is, well, interesting to watch. Also adding quirkiness and some adept physical humor to the cast is Don Calfa, who is perhaps best remembered for his role as Paulie the hapless hit man in "Weekend at Bernie's." Less successfully cast - indeed the killer of every scene he's in is Sorrel Booke as the sidekick who springs criminal mastermind Walter Ballantine (George C. Scott) from jail in order to pull off "the shot" on the bank.Scott himself, despite his great success in heavy satires like "Dr. Strangelove" and "The Hospital," seems strangely miscast or under-directed in this film. He so underplays his role that he often seems quite nearly asleep. One might be tempted to attribute the sleepwalking to the sodium nitrate (saltpeter) his character continues to consume in large doses even after escaping from prison, but so far as I know the chemical only causes impotence, not somnambulance. Joanna Cassidy, on the other hand, plays the gang's money man, hanger-on, and would-be seductress with a grating manic intensity.All in all, this gang isn't quite charming enough (British enough?) to make us care whether they succeed or fail in the heist nor does the screenplay supply enough chuckles to quite sustain the film's comic tone. "The Bank Shot" is nevertheless worth a look, but only in a widescreen version that preserves its original Panavision format. It can't afford to surrender even the slightest bit of the visual humor around its edges to cropping or panning.