Thieves Like Us is a 1974 film directed by Robert Altman and starring Keith Carradine and Shelley Duvall. The film was based on the novel Thieves Like Us by Edward Anderson. The novel is also the source material for the 1949 film They Live by Night, directed by Nicholas Ray. As well as starring well known actors and actresses of the era such as Keith Carradine and Shelley Duvall, the film features a large number of small town people as extras, including Lloyd Jones, an actual Mississippi State Highway Patrolman.

Thieves Like Us differs from They Live By Night by being filmed largely on location in Mississippi, while the earlier movie was filmed in a studio. The Bowie and Keechie characters in Thieves Like Us do not get married, and Bowie's innocence is not asserted as aggressively as in They Live By Night.

Plot summary

Bowie (Carradine), a youthful convicted murderer, and bank robbers Chicamaw (John Schuck} and T-Dub (Bert Remsen} escape from a Mississippi chain gang in the 1930s. They hole up with a gas station attendant and continue robbing banks.

Bowie, who is injured in an auto accident, takes refuge with a the daughter of the gas station attendant, Keechie (Duvall). They become romantically involved but their relationship is strained by Bowie's refusal to leave his life of crime.

Chicamaw is eventually recaptured and T-Dub is killed in a bank robbery. Bowie poses as a sheriff's deputy to extract Chickamaw from jail. But he quickly becomes disgusted with the violent, raving Chicamaw and abandons him on the side of the road.

The law catches up with Bowie, as they are betrayed by a motor hotel keeper, and he meets a violent end. Keechie carries on, pregnant with Bowie's baby.

See also

• They Live By Night

External links

• "Thieves Like Us" at Internet Movie Database