[In Thieves Like Us] Altman re-creates the depression Thirties …, but despite the clothing, cars, buildings, the ubiquitous Coca-Cola bottles, and the 1930s radio programmes that Altman uses almost as a music track, he has not made just another 'evocation' film. Rather, by using the basic plot of the novel, he has made an alternative to [Nicholas Ray's film noir, They Live By Night, based on Edward Anderson's novel Thieves Like Us] in which the entrapment and destruction of innocents takes place in the open country, in the light instead of the dark, in a world that appears to be free and pure. Altman's distancing effect is therefore quite different from Ray's. They Live By Night is contemporary in time, and its film noir elements remove us from any intense identification with its characters. Thieves Like Us is a re-creation of a distant time, but a re-creation done with...