STRAIGHT TO HELL

The only thing as hard as being in prison is being out.

In Straight Time Dustin Hoffman plays a parolee having a hard time adjusting to life on the outside. Things go well initially. He gets a job. He meets a woman (Theresa Russell, so excellent work there). He stays out of trouble. But civilian life is difficult to navigate, especially when his nosy parole officer (the impressively slimy M. Emmett Walsh) expects the worst of him. It doesn’t take long for Hoffman to fold under the pressure, and just like that he’s back in the rackets, robberies specifically, and of course they escalate until he’s aiming for a big score.

Straight Time is Hoffman doing his thing after brilliant efforts in Little Big Man, Straw Dogs, Midnight Cowboy, Marathon Man, All the President’s Men, and Lenny. In other words, he’s at the height of his abilities and he turns the story of a con making bad choices into a viscerally believable ride. He would move on mainly to less gritty roles the rest of his career. For example, the next year he did Kramer vs. Kramer, and a couple of years after that came Tootsie. So Straight Time is worth seeing just to witness Hoffman in a mode he was moving beyond. If that isn’t enough enticement, well, the movie is great.

Straight Time, Dustin Hoffman, Theresa Russell, M. Emmett Walsh, poster art, cinema, movie review

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HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

April 17

1961—Bay of Pigs Invasion Is Launched

A group of CIA financed and trained Cuban refugees lands at the Bay of Pigs in southern Cuba with the aim of ousting Fidel Castro. However, the invasion fails badly and the result is embarrassment for U.S. president John F. Kennedy and a major boost in popularity for Fidel Castro, and also has the effect of pushing him toward the Soviet Union for protection.

April 16

1943—First LSD Trip Takes Place

Swiss scientist Albert Hofmann, while working at Sandoz Laboratories in Basel, accidentally absorbs lysergic acid diethylamide, better known as LSD, and thus discovers its psychedelic properties. He had first synthesized the substance five years earlier but hadn’t been aware of its effects. He goes on to write scores of articles and books about his creation.

April 15

1912—The Titanic Sinks

Two and a half hours after striking an iceberg in the North Atlantic Ocean on its maiden voyage, the British passenger liner RMS Titanic sinks, dragging 1,517 people to their deaths. The number of dead amount to more than fifty percent of the passengers, due mainly to the fact the liner was not equipped with enough lifeboats.

April 15

1947—Robinson Breaks Color Line

African-American baseball player Jackie Robinson officially breaks Major League Baseball’s color line when he debuts for the Brooklyn Dodgers. Several dark skinned men had played professional baseball around the beginning of the twentieth century, but Robinson was the first to overcome the official segregation policy called—ironically, in retrospect—the “gentleman’s agreement.”

April 14

1935—Dust Storm Strikes U.S.

Exacerbated by a long drought combined with poor conservation techniques that caused excessive soil erosion on farmlands, a huge dust storm known as Black Sunday rages across Texas, Oklahoma, and several other states, literally turning day to night and redistributing an estimated 300,000 tons of topsoil.