General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

Straight Time

Straight Time is a 1978 American crime drama directed by Ulu Grosbard, starring Dustin Hoffman as Max Dembo, a paroled burglar who tries to go straight but is pushed back into crime by his parole officer and his own temperament. It is based on the 1973 novel No Beast So Fierce by Edward Bunker, a former convict who also co-wrote the screenplay and appears in the cast.¹

Key fact	Detail
Release	17 March 1978, New York City and Los Angeles openings; 114 minutes; R rating¹
Source	No Beast So Fierce by Edward Bunker (New York, 1973)¹
Director	Ulu Grosbard, who replaced Hoffman as director on 28 March 1977 after Hoffman stepped down¹
Screenplay	Alvin Sargent, Edward Bunker, and Jeffrey Boam; Nancy Dowd and Michael Mann wrote uncredited additional material¹^•²
Principal cast	Dustin Hoffman (Max Dembo), Theresa Russell (Jenny Mercer), Harry Dean Stanton (Jerry Schue), Gary Busey (Willy Darin), M. Emmet Walsh (Earl Frank), Kathy Bates (Selma Darin)²
Production	SweetWall Productions and First Artists; distributed by Warner Bros.; filmed in Technicolor with Panavision equipment¹
Reception	82% on the Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer from 11 reviews, with an average rating of 8.3/10³

Spoilers

Plot

Max Dembo, a career criminal, is paroled and determined to go straight. He takes a job in a cannery and begins a romance with Jenny Mercer, a sympathetic woman from the employment office, while enduring the abuse of his parole officer, Earl Frank. When Earl erroneously busts him for drug abuse, Dembo cracks: he assaults Earl and sets off on a reckless crime spree, drawing the reformed crook Jerry Schue into helping him. A climactic big caper goes tragically awry, in large part because of the flaws in Max's personality.³^•⁴

The American Film Institute's synopsis describes the film as a probe into the sociopathic psyche of the career criminal, in which neither Max nor his fellow ex-cons can survive looking for legitimate work.⁴ The Australian Centre for the Moving Image notes the film's gritty urban feel, placing it among 1970s American films addressing urban isolation, lack of personal freedom, and the demise of American ideals of free will and choice.⁵

Origin of the novel

The source novel grew out of its author's own imprisonment. In the early 1960s, during his time serving a sentence at San Quentin State Prison, Edward Bunker got in touch with Armitage Watkins, a literary agent based in New York, who consented to give him guidance on his writing; by that point Bunker had been given a typewriter by Louise Wallis, an ex-actress married to producer Hal B. Wallis, and he subsequently took part in the Creative Writing Workshop that fellow inmate Robert Dellinger had started at the Federal Correctional Institution in Terminal Island, California. Watkins submitted Bunker's manuscript about a paroled convict to W.W. Norton & Co. in January 1972, and No Beast So Fierce was published the following year.¹

Mirroring his fictional story, Bunker was paroled in June 1973 but re-entered prison after participating in a bank robbery. He was released again on 23 December 1976, which allowed him to work on the film's set as a consultant and dialogue writer, in addition to his credits as a screenwriter and cast member; he plays Mickey. Behind-the-scenes footage of this work appeared in a 2007 DVD featurette titled Straight Time: He Wrote It For Criminals.¹

Production

Production began on 9 February 1977, with locations including Folsom, Los Angeles, Burbank, San Bernardino, and Sylmar, California.¹

Hoffman's one day as director. Dustin Hoffman originally intended to direct the film himself, juggling the duties of director, star, and uncredited producer. According to his first assistant director Jerry Ziesmer, writing in a 1998 New York Times editorial, the first day of filming at Folsom involved a basic establishing shot of the prison; Hoffman requested constant resets, and by that evening the crew had not completed a single frame. Hoffman spent only one day in the director's chair before stepping down by choice, and Ulu Grosbard took over beginning 28 March 1977.¹

It was the second film Hoffman and Grosbard made together, after Who Is Harry Kellerman and Why Is He Saying Those Terrible Things About Me?⁴ Following Grosbard's involvement, news items referred to the film as Straight Time, a title Grosbard called, in the 2007 DVD commentary, a simpler representation of the story's theme than the literary name No Beast So Fierce, which survives as the film's alternate title.¹

The credited crew includes Owen Roizman as director of photography, Sam O'Steen and Randy Roberts as editors, Stephen Grimes as production designer, and David Shire as composer; Shire's jazz-infused score is at its best under the robbery sequences and the opening credits.¹^•⁶ Production costs were covered by an arrangement between First Artists and Warner Bros.¹

Reception

The film opened in New York City and Los Angeles on 17 March 1978.¹ In The New Yorker, Penelope Gilliatt, the magazine's film critic, reviewed it on 27 March 1978, describing Hoffman's Max as an emptied man whose real self belongs back in prison, and praising Grosbard's direction of the character.⁷ On Rotten Tomatoes the film holds an 82% Tomatometer from 11 reviews, with an average of 8.3/10; Matt Brunson of Film Frenzy called it one of the most unflinching movies ever made about the criminal mindset, and David Nusair of Reel Film Reviews described it as a slow-moving yet completely captivating character study.³

The film was released on home video by Warner Home Video on 26 October 2006, and later issued on Blu-ray by the Warner Archive Collection.⁸^•⁶

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Crime, thriller, and mystery films (individual works) › 1970s films

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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