cult film freak: HARVEY KEITEL ON THE POST-HEIST 'THE FBI: DEADLY AMBITION'

Harvey Keitel on THE FBI: Deadly Ambition Year: 1974 Rating: ****

The very end quote of the final season FBI episode DEADLY AMBITION sums up what the viewer had already noticed, underlining the over-the-top proto-noir performance of Harvey Keitel, fresh from a MEAN STREETS breakthrough that was more critically acclaimed than mainstream enough to go beyond several television crime shows, including the pilot episode of KOJAK, where he plays a similar climbing crook, only leading a bank heist...

Here it's much more fun and involving as Keitel, after pulling off a rural armored car robbery and forcing lowly but lovely cook Claudia Jennings to be his sexy moll, climbs through the ranks of the bigwigs who hired him, including BULLITT co-star Don Gordon, leading to Robert Hooks as, strangely enough, a black mob boss who prefers golfing to chewing out Italian underlings...

Harvey Keitel and Robert Hooks on THE FBI: Deadly Ambition

A golf course where Keitel as Eddie Kahn's WHITE HEAT finale takes place, being forced to surrender in a literal sand trap before the epilog where Efrem Zimbalist Jr. tells him: "You've seen too many gangster movies," which is perfect for Keitel, who was the James Cagney from the 1970's all the way to his 1992 career-turn in RESERVOIR DOGS, another post-heist situation: only this AMBITION taking place mostly in the frantic/running-around-town daylight...

Also featuring future HILL STREET BLUES cop James B. Sikking and SANTA CLAUS VS THE MARTIANS villain Vincent Beck as FBI agents... and a mustache-less Gerald McRaney helping the take-down of Keitel's character, who, not so bright but addictive and even somewhat aggressively endearing, could have been a recurring character: the firebrand climber actually helping THE FBI take down mob bosses by simply (and insanely) wanting to replace them.