STRAIGHT TIME (1978)

Monday November 10
6:00 PM

STRAIGHT TIME
classic
1978 / US / 114 minutes / Format: 16mm Directors: Ulu Grosbard, Dustin Hoffman Cast: Dustin Hoffman, Theresa Russell, Gary Busey, Harry Dean Stanton Print Source: Warner Brothers

Straight Time is a classic 1970s film that features some of the best acting of Dustin Hoffman’s career. Hoffman plays Max Dembo, an ex-con who has just been released from prison after serving time for armed robbery. Determined to stay out of trouble and enter back into normal life, he finds a job and makes the mandatory visits to his spiteful parole officer. But Dembo is floundering, trapped in a world where ‘ex-con’ is a caustic label that has the same stifling effect as the prison bars he’s left behind. When discouraging circumstances build to a critical level, Max arrives at the grim realization that a life of crime may be where he belongs after all. A fascinating study of a man imprisoned by his own criminal identity, Straight Time is an underseen slice of classic ‘70s cinema that is so impressive, you’ll wonder why it isn’t more widely known.