Jonathan Kaplan's 'The Gentleman Bandit' (1981) is a compellingly told, emotionally edifying true-crime story, wherein movie maestro Kaplan displays some remarkable cinematic fluency, and beloved veteran character actor Ralph Waite is quite brilliant as the beleaguered Father Bernard Pagano, his affably jocular lawyer Jerry Shnee is energetically portrayed with an impish charm by the equally magnetic Jerry Zaks, all that sweetly satisfying acting goodness, plus a refined score by the super talented composer Stanley 'Sitting target' Myers lends the 'The Gentleman Bandit' some additional grandeur. With almost nary a misstep, the clearly engaged director artfully recreates this fascinating case of a seemingly saintly Baltimore priest accused of a series of armed robberies, and the gentle film's relative obscurity is somewhat baffling, as the quietly charismatic Waite delivers a wonderfully warm, consistently earnest, endearingly fragile portrayal of this all-too mortal servant of god, a goodly soul whose once resolute faith is rigorously tested by his ignominious incarceration, and subsequent trial.
The Gentleman Bandit's wintry, deliciously hazy, snow-lashed setting is strangely beguiling, the visibly frost-bitten exterior scenes adding considerable verisimilitude to father Pagano's emotional isolation, and increasingly desperate predicament, and in lesser hands, this all might well have degraded into a disingenuous, easily digested, and no less readily forgotten TV movie, but Kaplan and his stalwart cast & crew make the eminently watchable 'The Gentleman Bandit' an altogether more noble, and palpably heartfelt cinematic adventure! On a more personal note, I found the intimate scenes between kindly father Pagano and the more emotionally troubled members of his flock to be far from saccharine exchanges, being strongly imbued with gravitas, making for genuinely moving drama. The more eager B-Movie beavers might also appreciate early appearances by a young, fresh-faced, TV-obsessed Vincent Spano, alongside future acting heavyweight Giancarlo Esposito, playing one of the softly spoken thief's angered victims, and that the gifted DP John Lindley went on to shoot William Fruet's cult slasher ''Killer Party' (1986), and Phil Alden Robinson's 'Sneakers'. (Or, perhaps, many may not be so geekily inclined!)
