In the grievously underrated Don Siegel thriller Charley Varrick. Walter Matthau stars as the title character, who sets up a well-planed heist of a small bank in remote New Mexico. We expect a movie “perfect crime” to go awry, which it does, ironically, by being unexpectedly successful. It turns out that Varrick has unknowingly stolen a secret Mob fortune being laundered by the bank, and now the underworld organization is after him. Only his wits can save him. I’ve rewatched Charley Varrick a couple of times recently, and it still holds up for me.
Siegel was a master of crime movies (and was the primary filmmaking mentor to Clint Eastwood). I particularly love Siegel’s San Francisco noir The Lineup, the guilty pleasure Two Mules for Sister Sara and John Wayne’s goodbye, The Shootist. The 1973 neo-noir Charley Varrick is right up there with Siegel’s best.
Charley is being pursued by a ruthless mob boss (John Vernon) and his extremely sadistic hit man (Joe Don Baker), ironically named Molly. Charley must trap them before they trap him, and he deploys remarkable ingenuity, some involving burgled dental records. Charley is a former crop-duster and stunt pilot, and aviation is pivotal, especially in the final showdown.
The role of Charley Varrick is a perfect match for Walter Matthau’s gift for playing regular guys with street smarts. This is a great Matthau performance as a canny guy who must act with urgency and amazing resourcefulness, all while profoundly grieving and in great peril.
John Vernon excelled as cruel, deep-voiced bad guys, which he did in Point Blank and as four different villains in television’s Mission Impossible. These roles preceded his career-defining Dean Wormer in National Lampoon’s Animal House.
In Charley Varrick, Joe Don Baker leveraged his innate magnetism and his imposing physicality to create one scary dude. 1973 was the peak of Baker’s career. He also co-stared with Robert Duvall and Linda Black in The Outfit and vaulted into cultural iconography as Sheriff Buford Pusser in Walking Tall.
Charley Varrick is based on the John H. Reese novel The Looters, about the bank robbery. Herman Miller and Dean Riesner wrote the screenplay. The two had written the Clint Eastwood movie Coogan’s Bluff for Siegel. Riesner then wrote Dirty Harry for Siegel and Play Misty for Me and High Plains Drifter for Eastwood.
The supporting cast is uncommonly rich. Felicia Farr and Sheree North play two important and sympathetic women in the story. Familiar-faced TV character actors abound: Norman Fell, William Schallert, Woodrow Parfrey and Andrew Robinson, along with classic movie veterans Tom Tully and Benson Fong. Siegel himself has a cameo, as does Joe Conforte, operator of the famed Mustang Ranch brothel, as himself.
Charley Varrick can be streamed from Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu and YouTube.