In Peter Yates‘ The Hot Rock, the great Robert Redford plays John Dortmunder with only a very slight hint of comedic tilt. Half-deadpan and half-buried angst. When Graham Jarvis‘s warden asks “you couldn’t really go straight?”, Dortmunder retreats into solemnity and half-mutters his reply: “My heart wouldn’t be in it, Frank.” He addresses the warden by his first name! And he means it about the heart component. Dortumunder is into larceny for the bolt and the buzz…the juice is what sends his heart soaring.
Plus I adore Dortmunder’s look of nihilist self-recognition or resignation…a look that says “what do you want me to do….change?…this is who I am.”