1930's, Mississippi. Naïve convicted murderer Bowie (a fine and engaging performance by Keith Carradine) escapes from prison along with the laid-back T-Dub (the always excellent Bert Remsen) and ill-tempered brute Chicamaw (a frightening portrayal by John Schuck). The trio embark on a bank robbing spree. Moreover, Bowie falls for simple country girl Keechie (beautifully played with touching sincerity by Shelley Duvall) after he decides to take refuge at a farmhouse.Director Robert Altman, who also co-wrote the thoughtful script with Joan Tewkesbery and Calder Willingham, deftly crafts a flavorsome rural atmosphere as well as a vivid and authentic evocation of the Great Depression-era setting, relates the engrossing story at a leisurely pace, admirably refuses to either vilify or glamorize the outlaw lifestyle, and handles the sweet and tender romance between Bowie and Keechie with utterly disarming warmth and humanity. Moreover, Altman's inspired use of colorful and creative radio programs throughout serves as a sharp ironic counterpoint to the drab mundane world the characters exist in. In addition, there are sturdy supporting contributions from Louise Fletcher as T-Dub's disapproving sister Mattie, Tom Skerritt as crusty mechanic Dee Mobley, and Ann Latham as the sassy Lula. Jean Boffety's picturesque cinematography provides a pretty pastoral look. A real sleeper.

One hears of a movie being gritty and there's an automatic feeling of defeat. Gritty is to realistic as realistic is to tragic, and most go out to the theater to escape from all that. I bet you'd pick Singin' in the Rain over Love Streams, after all; you're only human. But Robert Altman doesn't do grit like Cassavetes or the Coen's — instead of consuming himself with shoddy realities, he finds the humor in the intricacies of everyday life, especially when those everyday mundanities are suddenly shaken and stirred. His best films, like Nashville or Short Cuts, are capable of being plain and true, but they are also capable of being hysterically funny and relatable. He invites us into the worlds of his films instead of pushing us away. There are no hints of man, I'm glad I'm not them — you suddenly correlate to their neuroses, good or bad, whether they're walking around with some drug pushers or they've just been knighted by the Queen.The characters in Thieves Like Us only consist of criminals and the people who love them, but it's less Bonnie and Clyde and more Radio Days or A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. Like the latter, the situation is dire and the people lead difficult lives, but the story is told as though the narrator is sitting by the fire in a cozy brownstone in pre-Depression era New York. The words eventually move in a cataclysmic direction, but the events building up to those eventual thunderclouds are told quietly and affectionately, appreciating even the smallest of joyful moments. Thieves Like Us doesn't deliver what we might expect in terms of straightforward entertainment, but like all Altman fills, the naturalistic dialogue and no-frills style add up to something that feels home cooked, and, in this film's case, Southern-fried.It's about outlaws in love (a trend popular in the early 1970s, as evidenced by 1973's Badlands and 1974's The Sugarland Express), young and stupid, caring and confused. They are Bowie (Keith Carradine) and Keechie (Shelley Duvall). Bowie has always been a sort of Robin to his criminal friends, the country boy who needs guidance to pull off a particularly difficult robbery. Keechie is the crooked toothed, naïve daughter of a gas station attendant. The first time we meet Bowie, he is escaping from captivity, having been kept in a chain gang for a previous misdemeanor. He, along with his deplorable posse, hide out with the owner of the gas station and continue on a path of bank robberies. But after a confrontation, Bowie is injured, Keechie acts as his nurse, and … well, you can probably assume the rest.These people don't have much in the way of intelligence; they're small town criminals who live small town lives who rob small town banks. They break the law not out of necessity but because they just don't know what to do with themselves. But Thieves Like Us is hardly a glamour puss trying to make this crappy way of living seem cool; we exist only as a fly on the wall. These are not slick anti-heroes but screw-ups who probably grew up too fast, in denial about the repercussions they will someday face. When not acting as bandits, they lounge around in each other's company, reminiscing over biscuits and gravy while the radio drowns out quick glimpses of silence.That radio, oddly enough, is always playing, always matching the actions of the characters or the direction the film is going in. The speakers project stories of danger or superhero headlining serials — they contradict the characters in Thieves Like Us, who are bumbling and messed up and confused whereas the goons that define the radio programs are clever and successful in everything they do. Maybe Bowie and company admire those qualities; maybe they're not smart enough to realize that they'll ever achieve that level of calculated perfection.The moments between Bowie and Keechie, though, are what make Thieves Like Us so touching. They aren't blindingly attractive like the other "lovers on the run" archetypes of the era, and they aren't necessarily sure why the other is person is so appealing. What they do know, however, is that they love one another and will do anything to stay in each other's arms. There's a point in the film where Bowie lies to Keechie about a trip (which turns out to be yet another criminal excursion), and she freaks out like she's a bat-out-of-hell, going from the demeanor of the sweet, affable girl to the potential wife who drives you crazy but you love anyway. For a second, she considers punishing Bowie by leaving him — but she stops herself. She loves him, sure, but if she did leave him, what would happen to him, to her? The relationship is tender and poignant, with post-coital scenes that affect us with their feelings of mutual adoration as cigarette smoke flies and silences ring.Thieves Like Us is an imperfect Altman film — unlike many of his movies, banalities are not always enlivened by their dialogue — but its intimate, sweet-sad pathos are grandiose even when things seem small.Read more reviews at petersonreviews.com

Robert Altman was a busy boy in the early '70s, gleefully destroying the mythology of cherished genres with the enthusiasm of a little kid with a toy hammer. When he made a Western (McCabe & Mrs. Miller), his hero was a bearded pimp wandering a snow-covered land of Leonard Cohen songs and near-inaudible dialogue. When he turned his hand to film noir (The Long Goodbye), it was to introduce a scruffy, shambling Philip Marlowe whose messy hair matched his messy mind - and who couldn't even con his cat into eating an inferior brand of food. Thieves Like Us, released the next year, was something of a departure: less doggedly contrarian, with its aspects of realism allied to a certain heightenedness in style and atmosphere that smelled like folklore-fashioning.The film is an adaptation of a 1937 Edward Anderson novel, filmed previously in 1949 as They Live by Night, director Nicholas Ray's brilliant debut and one of the most vivid evocations of young love - and Depression-era desperation - ever put on film. While the first movie made excuses for its desperate protagonist (Farley Granger), here murderer Keith Carradine has no regrets (except that he's never pitched pro-ball) and no intention of leaving behind his life of crime with two older desperadoes, despite having found love. This is a tougher film to fall for, then, but an easy one to admire.Beginning with a shot of chain-gang convicts rumbling past on the rails, Altman effortlessly conjures a world of poverty, dirt and hopeless aspiration, shoving bottles of Coke into every scene and soundtracking his film with almost ever-present radios, playing light entertainment shows, crime serials, news broadcasts and political speeches. Occasionally it's too heavy-handed (the Romeo and Juliet sex scene, with its repetitive refrain), but more often it's perfectly-judged. The film follows the trio from the aftermath of their prison escape to their bullet-riddled fate, contrasting their presentation in the press with the less exciting, but more intriguing reality. In the midst of all that, there's time for numerous superb vignettes (the '36th robbery' being the highlight) and a touching romance between Carradine and gas-station attendant's daughter Shelley Duvall.For those who only know Duvall as the perpetually-screaming would-be-victim of a large portion of ham (Jack Nicholson) in Kubrick's The Shining - which I seem to be alone in thinking is actually quite a poor film - this should be something of an eye-opener. For the first seven years of her career, Duvall appeared only in the films of Altman, evincing a rare kind of magic in her rich and sensitive characterisations. She's wonderful again here: needy, adoring and appealing. Her defining moment is a scene where a lesser performer could have blown it all, as she shifts from scorned fury ("You lied. Liar!") to longing and a desire for affirmation, cradling Carradine's head as he sits motionless on the bed. Carradine himself has been lacklustre more often than he's been impressive, but he did some of his best work for Altman (most notably in the following year's Nashville) and is extremely effective in a role that suits him well. John Schuck and Bert Remsen also do strong work as his partners in crime, though the pick of the supporting cast is Louise Fletcher (One Flew Over's Nurse Ratched), excellent as a put-upon relation sheltering the titular thieves.In many ways, Altman was the key American director of the period, the one who both created and seized upon the unique opportunities of the period, realising the zeitgeist and pioneering its most important innovations, like overlapping dialogue and labyrinthine, novelistic narratives. Co-scripting here, he nails the period and the significance of this story, while throwing in some left-field touches that you'd swear were Coen brothers originals, leaving much of the main action sequences off the screen, and showing the crooks drawing straws to see who drives the getaway car... then deciding that's not going to work. It's a completely different take on Anderson's novel than They Live by Night, but just as incisive, rewarding and memorable.

Back to the 30's, folks. I was there, I know. It wasn't that you saw Coke everywhere, it was the only soft drink you saw. There were no machines with a choice. There was a big red Coke cooler sitting at the service station, another outside the grocery. Some of them were serviced by the local ice company, that is; no motor, just ice. A lot of times they had a padlock on them, in other places you just lifted the lid, helped yourself and left your nickel. Later they graduated to some with slots where you could put your nickel. No point in showing people in this movie drinking anything else, except maybe iced tea. No one else had the coolers, and so all you saw was Coke. Add to that the amount of fountain coke we drank. And it took Robert Altman to make us all think about it.