Simply A Masterpiece

Absolutely Fantastic

A Masterpiece!

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

Excellent film with James Caan starring as a typical divorced man with 2 children. His wife gets involved with a gangster and when her new husband is wanted for a bank robbery, the mob strongly suggests that he marry her so that she can't testify against him. When he is caught, he turns the tables on the mob and is placed in the Witness Protection Program. Problem is that he leaves with his new wife and children, and the Caan character has every door slammed in his face when he tries to find out from the government what has happened to his children.This film shows you the inhumanity of the government in consideration of Caan's request. They will either ignore him or thwart any attempt of his to make contact with his children.Caan plays the desperate father quite well.

One of the great unsung directing debut's from a versatile character actor with stat status. I remember the mid to late 70's cinema scene with fondness and the prospect of James Caan directing as well as starring in a character-driven piece was like manna from heaven to me. Living in the UK I never got to see this release in the cinema (despite excellent coverage in UK's Films and Filming magazine), but I caught up on it during the 80's video revolution (in an un-hired ex-rental video). Unfortunately the video was panned and scanned to 4:3 thus diminishing the composition and I had to wait until the late 90's to catch this excellent drama on TCM where it was regularly screened in it's correct aspect ratio. Since purchasing a DVD recorder last year this title has not popped up on UKTV so I wait with baited breath for the return of "Hide In Plain Sight" to the TV screens.....hey! maybe someone will lobby for a DVD release because you've got to admit it's far superior the 95% of the dross that gets released every week of the year!

This film DID get a theatrical release, but it quickly disappeared. It's unfortunate, because it's very thoughtful film. As a director, Caan made some interesting choices.As a side note, I saw Caan discussing it in an interview a long time ago. He said the studio had no faith in the film, so they dumped it without much advertisement. And then they were shocked when it received great reviews. But by then, it was already dead. He also mentioned that the pan & scan version that was on TV changed a lot of wide-screen two shots into separate shots! I'm not sure if the same thing happened with the VHS, but I'll bet it did. Hopefully, a proper version will come out on DVD one of these days.

Now, I'm a big fan of car chases and big action, and I do love style for style's sake. But it's getting so it's hard to find anything but these things, even in a 'small' dramatic movie. This movie is quite genuine, it's got that 70's slower pace - a very natural build-up of the drama. James Caan's direction is clean and clever, and he plays that working class good man so well. The story is well handled, especially considering that it's based on true events, and without the overbearing score or dramatic character or situational embellishments that this film would have if it was made today. So refreshing.