🎥 Movies of 2021, 36: The Hot Rock At least the 3rd time I’ve seen the movie. And I’ve read the book at least twice. I decided to give it a re-watch after my most recent re-read of the book.
As always, I’m baffled that there aren’t more good Dortmunder films. Or Parker, for that matter. Westlake’s writing is fast, fun, tense and cinematic. He also wrote a fucking ton of books, so there’s no shortage of material. I’ve never understood why Hollywood didn’t adapt a jillion of his stories during the 90s and 00s when heists and cool criminals were all the rage.
During this watch of The Hot Rock I formulated a theory, it’s because the films focus on the wrong parts of the book. Dortmunder books are funny because of the dialog, the personal interactions, the weird bits of overheard conversations in the OJ. Yeah, the heists are fun, but they are funny because of the characters.
The Hot Rock, while good, gets this mostly wrong. There’s character stuff at the start, but once the heists start the movie is all heists. It starts to feel flat and repetitive. The novel alternates between heists and character. So it builds and gets funnier.
Hollywood is always going to favor showing a heist over showing a funny conversation. Maybe that’s why the other Dortmunder movies never worked.
The Hot Rock still works because it’s got an astounding team behind it. George Segal is Kelp. And Ron Liebman is Murch. Redford is a bad choice for Dortmunder, but he’s still charming as hell, because he’s Redford. Quincy Jones delivers an amazing score. Peter Yates and Edward R. Brown capture 70s New York gloriously.
