The Silent Partner 1978 Based on the novel Think Of A Number by Anders Bodelsen, screenplay by Curtis Hanson, directed by Daryl Duke. A Canadian movie shot and set in Toronto.
Elliott Gould is a bank teller who discovers a hold up note on a deposit slip. He suspects someone is going to rob the bank and got scared away. Turns out he was right, Christopher Plummer, working as a mall Santa, has the plan. It works too, he gets a bag of money from Elliot and gets away. Christopher is really pissed when he finds that Elliott has glommed onto a large chuck of cash and blamed it on him. A big part of the movie that follows is devoted to Christopher trying to convince Elliott to part with the cash. Elliott refuses and things get ugly, Chris turns out to be a violent psychopath. After hearing the cash info on the news Christopher beats up a young woman for no reason.
Another chunk of the movie is devoted to Elliot's love life and the goings on among the bank staff. Many of the characters are morally ambivalent, there's a lot of cheating going on in their lives. Soon the two streams mix and people start to die. It becomes a fight to the finish. The cast was fairly good, Susannah York does alright as Elliott's main romantic interest, John Candy has a tiny part, as does another SCTV alum, Tony Rosato. The script was fairly decent in moving all the characters around but I found some of their personal melodrama to be a bit tedious. The film plods along using 106 mins to tell the story. It does pick up in the last act. My lack of interest in the characters only makes it slightly above average for me. It might have been a more effective thriller in 1978 though I don't think it's better than Marathon Man which came out a couple of years before. That's a much more tense thriller. I bought the Blu-ray and I might want to watch it again someday.
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