Dustin Hoffman gets paroled from Folsom State Prison, Los Angeles after six years and you've got to wonder how things could possibly go. He lacks the menace of, for instance, Tahar Rahim, and so his interactions with his parole officer M. Emmet Walsh (and so on) taxed my credulity. Theresa Russell, so young here, too young to be so jaded, works in the job centre and is apparently at a sufficiently loose end that he looks like a good bet; she knows what she wants even if we can't see it. (How did she finance that fabulous abode? — and the Mustang.) There's some joyful recidivism. It works as a time capsule.
Directed by Ulu Grosbard from a script that IMDB trivia says was initially developed by Michael Mann, author of the source novel/experience Edward Bunker, and Nancy Dowd (Slap Shot (1977), Coming Home (1978), Ordinary People (1980)). Alvin Sargent (Paper Moon (1973), Ordinary People (1980)) and Jeffrey Boam were credited with the doctoring. Mann's involvement explains why Hoffman is more like James Caan in Thief (1981) than Hoffman in any other thing I've seen him in. Russell is not Tuesday Weld but there is a prefiguring of the diner scene here. Harry Dean Stanton mumbled like Dennis Hopper. Kathy Bates did not look convinced.
