The Unenthusiastic Critic

The Unenthusiastic Critic


THE SILENT PARTNER (1978)

December 29, 2020

The Unenthusiastic Critic concludes her 2020 marathon of "Christmas-adjacent" movies, with an unjustly forgotten suspense thriller from the 1970s: Daryl Duke's The Silent Partner (1978), starring Elliott Gould and Christopher Plummer. First, this week, we're having a brief discussion about The Year in Review, as we discover which movies The Unenthusiastic Critic is glad she watched in 2020, which ones she is angry she watched, and which ones she doesn't even remember watching. Then, we're sitting down for Nakea's first viewing of a sleeper classic. Overlooked and under-distributed on its release in 1978, The Silent Partner is a tense cat-and-mouse game that turns out to be a cat-and-cat game, as Elliott Gould's seemingly meek bank teller turns out to be more than a match for Christopher Plummer's homicidal bank robber. Will Michael be able to convince Nakea that this overlooked Hitchcockian gem—with an early screenplay by Oscar-winner Curtis Hanson (L.A. Confidential)—deserves to be a cult canon Christmas favorite? Program 0:00: Prologue: from The Silent Partner 0:33: Preliminary Discussion: Our Year in Review 12:26: Interlude: from The Silent Partner 12:46: Cultural Osmosis: Pre-Viewing Discussion 20:49: Original Trailer 22:35: The Verdict: Post-Viewing Discussion 54:36: Outro and Next Week's Movie 56:03: Outtake For show notes, links, additional episodes, and other information, please go to unaffiliatedcritic.com.