Backdrop fallback

Straight Time

Straight Time

Share

Straight Time

""Please God, don't let him get caught.""

1978

1h 54m

7.1(213 votes)

Crime

Drama

Overview

After being released on parole, a burglar attempts to go straight, get a regular job, and just go by the rules. He soon finds himself back in jail at the hands of a power-hungry parole officer.

Where to Watch

Buy

Apple TV Store

Rent

Apple TV Store

Amazon Video

Links & Resources

Social & External

Production Companies

First Artists

Warner Bros. Pictures

The people behind it

Cast & crew

10 featured cast members

Starring

Dustin Hoffman

Dustin Hoffman

Max Dembo

Theresa Russell

Theresa Russell

Jenny Mercer

Gary Busey

Gary Busey

Willy Darin

Harry Dean Stanton

Harry Dean Stanton

Jerry Schue

M. Emmet Walsh

M. Emmet Walsh

Earl Frank

Rita Taggart

Rita Taggart

Carol Schue

Kathy Bates

Kathy Bates

Selma Darin

Sandy Baron

Sandy Baron

Manny

Jake Busey

Jake Busey

Henry Darin

Peter Kwong

Peter Kwong

Grocery Clerk

Creative team

Directed by: Ulu Grosbard
Written by: Alvin Sargent
Edward Bunker
Produced by: Stanley Beck
Tim Zinnemann

Similar Movies

Love Child

A woman is stuck in a loveless marriage to a brutish husband, but when a handsome vagabond stranger appears, her precocious 11-year-old hatches a plan to get rid of his father so that his mother can marry this new man instead. But things end up backfiring, so he comes up with yet another plan, this one even more devious, with more disastrous and unexpected consequences.

The Prisoner

The Prisoner

While traveling in Europe Philip Quentin encounters his former sweetheart, Dorothy Garrison, and finds that she is now engaged to Prince Ugo Ravorelli, whom Philip recognizes as the man wanted for a murder in Brazil.

Jackie Brown

Jackie Brown

Jackie Brown is a flight attendant who gets caught in the middle of smuggling cash into the country for her gunrunner boss. When the cops try to use Jackie to get to her boss, she hatches a plan — with help from a bail bondsman — to keep the money for herself.

A Clockwork Orange

A Clockwork Orange

In a near-future Britain, young Alexander DeLarge and his pals get their kicks beating and raping anyone they please. When not destroying the lives of others, Alex swoons to the music of Beethoven. The state, eager to crack down on juvenile crime, gives an incarcerated Alex the option to undergo an invasive procedure that'll rob him of all personal agency. In a time when conscience is a commodity, can Alex change his tune?

Trouble in Paradise

Trouble in Paradise

Thief Gaston Monescu and pickpocket Lily are partners in crime and love. Working for perfume company executive Mariette Colet, the two crooks decide to combine their criminal talents to rob their employer. Under the alias of Monsieur Laval, Gaston uses his position as Mariette's personal secretary to become closer to her. However, he takes things too far when he actually falls in love with Mariette, and has to choose between her and Lily.

Barton Fink

Barton Fink

A renowned New York playwright is enticed to California to write for the movies and discovers the hellish truth of Hollywood.

Boys Don't Cry

Boys Don't Cry

A young transgender man explores his gender identity and searches for love in rural Nebraska.

The Million Dollar Hotel

The Million Dollar Hotel

A federal agent searches for a potential killer among the bizarre residents of a dilapidated Los Angeles hotel.

True Romance

True Romance

Clarence marries hooker Alabama, steals cocaine from her pimp, and tries to sell it in Hollywood, while the owners of the coke try to reclaim it.

The Killing

The Killing

Career criminal Johnny Clay recruits a sharpshooter, a crooked police officer, a bartender and a betting teller named George, among others, for one last job before he goes straight and gets married. But when George tells his restless wife about the scheme to steal millions from the racetrack where he works, she hatches a plot of her own.

Night on Earth

Night on Earth

A quintet of cabbies in five cities and their remarkable fares on the same eventful night.

A Crime

A Crime

Vincent's life is on hold until he finds his wife's killer. Alice, his neighbor, is convinced she can make him happy. She decides to invent a culprit, so that Vincent can find revenge and leave the past behind. But there is no ideal culprit and no perfect crime.

Bang, Boom, Bang

Bang, Boom, Bang

Bank robber Kalle Grabowski escapes from prison while his unemployed smalltime crook buddy is sitting around doing nothing after he just lost all their money. A fast paced comedy from German director Peter Thorwarth.

Raising Arizona

Raising Arizona

When a childless couple—an ex-con and an ex-cop—take one of a wealthy family’s quintuplets to raise as their own, their lives grow more complicated than anticipated.

Mala Noche

Mala Noche

Walt is a lonely convenience store clerk who has fallen in love with a Mexican migrant worker named Johnny. Though Walt has little in common with the object of his affections — including a shared language — his desire to possess Johnny prompts a sexual awakening that results in a tangled love triangle.

Inside Man

Inside Man

When an armed, masked gang enter a Manhattan bank, lock the doors and take hostages, the detective assigned to effect their release enters negotiations preoccupied with corruption charges he is facing.

12 Angry Men

12 Angry Men

The defense and the prosecution have rested and the jury is filing into the jury room to decide if a young Spanish-American is guilty or innocent of murdering his father. What begins as an open and shut case soon becomes a mini-drama of each of the jurors' prejudices and preconceptions about the trial, the accused, and each other.

Things to Do in Denver When You're Dead

Things to Do in Denver When You're Dead

Five different criminals face imminent death after botching a job quite badly.

The Interpreter

The Interpreter

After Silvia Broome, an interpreter at United Nations headquarters, overhears plans of an assassination, an American Secret Service agent is sent to investigate.

The Good German

The Good German

An American journalist arrives in Berlin just after the end of World War Two. He becomes involved in a murder mystery surrounding a dead GI who washes up at a lakeside mansion during the Potsdam negotiations between the Allied powers. Soon his investigation connects with his search for his married pre-war German lover.

Recommended Movies

Shot Caller

Shot Caller

A newly-released prison gangster is forced by the leaders of his gang to orchestrate a major crime with a brutal rival gang on the streets of Southern California.

Ambulance

Ambulance

Decorated veteran Will Sharp, desperate for money to cover his wife's medical bills, asks for help from his adoptive brother Danny. A charismatic career criminal, Danny instead offers him a score: the biggest bank heist in Los Angeles history: $32 million.

Detective Knight: Rogue

Detective Knight: Rogue

As Los Angeles prepares for Halloween, mask-wearing armed robbers critically wound detective James Knight’s partner in a shootout following a heist. With Knight in hot pursuit, the bandits flee L.A. for New York, where the detective’s dark past collides with his present case and threatens to tear his world apart…unless redemption can claim Knight first.

Farewell, My Lovely

Farewell, My Lovely

Private eye Philip Marlowe is hired by ex-con Moose Malloy to find his girlfriend, a former lounge dancer. While also investigating the murder of a client and the theft of a jade necklace, Marlowe becomes entangled with seductress Helen Grayle and discovers a web of dark secrets that are better left hidden.

Johnny Handsome

Johnny Handsome

A career criminal who has been deformed since birth is given a new face by a kindly doctor and paroled from prison. It appears that he has gone straight, but he is really planning his revenge on the man who killed his mentor and sent him to prison.

Street Kings

Street Kings

Tom Ludlow is a disillusioned L.A. Police Officer, rarely playing by the rules and haunted by the death of his wife. When evidence implicates him in the execution of a fellow officer, he is forced to go up against the cop culture he's been a part of his entire career, ultimately leading him to question the loyalties of everyone around him.

Heat

Heat

Obsessive master thief Neil McCauley leads a top-notch crew on various daring heists throughout Los Angeles while determined detective Vincent Hanna pursues him without rest. Each man recognizes and respects the ability and the dedication of the other even though they are aware their cat-and-mouse game may end in violence.

Another Day in Paradise

Another Day in Paradise

In the hope of a big score, two junkie couples team up to commit various drug robberies which go disastrously wrong, leading to dissent, violence, and murder.

End of Watch

End of Watch

Two young officers are marked for death after confiscating a small cache of money and firearms from the members of a notorious cartel during a routine traffic stop.

Copshop

Copshop

On the run from a lethal assassin, a wily con artist devises a scheme to hide out inside a small-town police station. However, when the hit man turns up at the precinct, an unsuspecting rookie cop finds herself caught in the crosshairs.

Bound by Honor

Bound by Honor

Based on the true life experiences of poet Jimmy Santiago Baca, the film focuses on half-brothers Paco and Cruz, and their bi-racial cousin Miklo. It opens in 1972, as the three are members of an East L.A. gang known as the "Vatos Locos", and the story focuses on how a violent crime and the influence of narcotics alter their lives. Miklo is incarcerated and sent to San Quentin, where he makes a "home" for himself. Cruz becomes an exceptional artist, but a heroin addiction overcomes him with tragic results. Paco becomes a cop and an enemy to his "carnal", Miklo.

Faster

Faster

After 10 years in prison, Driver is now a free man with a single focus - hunting down the people responsible for brutally murdering his brother.

Dark Blue

Dark Blue

Set during the Rodney King riots, a robbery homicide investigation triggers a series of events that will cause a corrupt LAPD officer to question his tactics.

Belly

Belly

Tommy Bundy and Sincere are best friends as well as infamous and ruthless criminals and shot-callers in the hood. Respected by many but feared by all. As the police are closing in on them and new players are looking for a come up, will their reign last?

The Usual Suspects

The Usual Suspects

Held in an L.A. interrogation room, Verbal Kint attempts to convince the feds that a mythic crime lord, Keyser Soze, not only exists, but was also responsible for drawing him and his four partners into a multi-million dollar heist that ended with an explosion in San Pedro harbor – leaving few survivors. Verbal lures his interrogators with an incredible story of the crime lord's almost supernatural prowess.

Den of Thieves

Den of Thieves

A gritty crime saga which follows the lives of an elite unit of the LA County Sheriff's Dept. and the state's most successful bank robbery crew as the outlaws plan a seemingly impossible heist on the Federal Reserve Bank.

Cradle 2 the Grave

Cradle 2 the Grave

Gang leader Tony pulls off a major diamond heist with his crew, but cop-turned-criminal Ling knows who has the loot and responds by kidnapping Tony's daughter and holding her for ransom. Unfortunately, Tony's lost the diamonds as well. As he frantically searches for his daughter and the jewels, Tony pairs with a high-kicking government agent who once worked with Ling and seeks revenge on him.

Sexy Beast

Sexy Beast

Ex-safecracker Gal Dove has served his time behind bars and is blissfully retired to a Spanish villa paradise with a wife he adores. The idyll is shattered by the arrival of his nemesis Don Logan, intent on persuading Gal to return to London for one last big job.

In Cold Light

In Cold Light

Fresh out of prison, Ava's attempt to reclaim her drug operation collapses when she witnesses a brutal crime, forcing her to flee into a nightmarish underworld where allies are scarce and enemies multiply by the minute.

Crown Vic

Crown Vic

One memorable night in the life of veteran patrol officer Ray Mandel and his trainee, ambitious rookie cop Nick Holland in the LAPD's Olympic Division. With two cop killers on the loose and hunting for more targets, Mandel and Holland must contend with a city about to boil over, as well as Jack VanZandt, an unhinged rogue cop out for payback running wild in their patrol zone.