This Movie Can Only Be Described With One Word.

SERIOUSLY. This is what the crap Hollywood still puts out?

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

Samuel Dashiell Hammett played a huge part in popularising the hardboiled detective stories which were responsible for changing the existing style of crime fiction in the 1920s and also strongly influenced the works of certain other prominent crime writers who followed him (e.g. Raymond Chandler, James M Cain etc.). Hammett's characters and stories were largely drawn from his own experiences as a detective working for the Pinkerton Agency and his hardboiled style was almost certainly a product of his Pinkerton's training which emphasised the need for agents to remain totally objective at all times to ensure that their judgement was not impaired by emotional involvement with the victims of crimes etc. As Pinkerton agents were also encouraged to do whatever was necessary to bring criminals to justice without being too concerned about normal standards of decency or morality, it's quite likely that this inspired the cynicism and moral ambiguity that also featured in his work.The movie "Hammett" (1982) is essentially an homage to the kind of fiction that provided a great deal of material for the films noir that influenced German director Wim Wenders so strongly during his childhood and focuses on the author's career where he'd already left the Pinkerton Agency and was selling his stories to crime magazines such as "Black Mask". It provides a fictionalised account of how he might have reluctantly got drawn into an investigation being carried out by an old friend and by so doing, gained the inspiration he needed to write one of his most successful novels.In San Francisco in 1928, crime-writer Dashiell Hammett (Frederic Forrest), (known to his friends as Sam), has just completed his latest story when he's visited by Jimmy Ryan (Peter Boyle) who was his mentor during his time at Pinkerton's. Jimmy taught Sam everything he knows about detective work and is now working on a missing person's case involving a Chinese girl who's been a victim of the slave trade and could be in imminent danger. Sam doesn't want to get involved but feels obliged to because, in the past, Jimmy saved his life by taking a bullet that was intended for him.The investigation takes the two men into the dangerous Chinatown underworld where Sam quickly finds that he hasn't forgotten some of the old skills that he learned at Pinkerton's. Things don't go as planned though when Sam loses his latest manuscript and Jimmy has to work alone to track down the young Crystal Ling (Lydia Lei). Trying to solve the mystery of Crystal's disappearance leads to brushes with corrupt cops and beatings before Sam discovers some pornography, prostitution and blackmail rackets that involve a number of wealthy people in influential positions in the city.Hammett is depicted as a laconic, heavy drinker who suffers alarming bouts of coughing because he's a TB sufferer. Before getting involved in the Chinatown investigation, he'd used Jimmy as a hero in his stories and his attractive downstairs neighbour Kit (Marilu Henner) as a key character called Sue Alabama. During his time in Chinatown however, he becomes involved with a whole series of people who are immediately recognisable as ones that later feature in his best known works.Despite the movie's well-documented production problems, the end-result looks well-directed, skilfully photographed and successfully evokes the atmosphere of the classic noirs. Its main deficiencies are a shortage of the witty repartee that's normally a feature of these types of stories and also a lack of realism that's caused by virtually everything being filmed in the studios. Frederic Forrest makes a convincing Hammett and the supporting cast is also very strong.

A fictionalized account of Dashiell Hammett getting involved in a scenario like something from one of his own stories. Wim Wenders constructs a neo-noir that's light on the "neo". No post-modern winks at the audience, no updating the sex and violence to the modern standards. Except for the color photography, one utterance of "shit" and slightly more sexual suggestion than you could get away with the time, it feels like something straight out of the era. The snappy dialogue, the canted angles, the rough and tumble characters, the twisty plot (more Chandler than Hammett, really, but whatever). The blatantly artificial sets are perhaps a little too self-conscious but it doesn't ever get too kitschy. Terrific score and very appropriate casting including Freddie Forrest, Peter Boyle, Marilu Henner and Elisha Cook. The biggest problem is that the film doesn't have a great storyline to hang its fedora on. It's pretty much just an exercise in pure duplication. But it's a fun time for lovers of the genre.

GOOD - I enjoyed the 1920s look, the San Francisco-Chinatown locale and the nice set designs. It was interesting to see Marilu Henner from television's "Taxi" fame. I also was great fun to see one of my favorite actors from the classic film noir era, Elisha Cook Jr. Another classic star, Sylvia Sidney, also makes an appearance.BAD - A somewhat convoluted story and several main male characters who are uninvolving - particularly lead character " Dashiell Hammett," played by Frederic Forest - make one lose interest in this story by the halfway point. If the lead doesn't connect with the audience, then the film is in trouble, which may explain why this movie is almost obscure. Peter Boyle, playing "Jimmy Ryan," also looked like he was reading his lines from a cue card. From what I've read, this film had a lot of production problems and much of the director Wim Wenders' work had to be re-shot by Francis Ford Copolla. Obviously, this project was a semi-disaster from the start. One thing they could have used: narration. It goes perfectly with this kind of story, and they didn't use it.Overall, being a film noir buff I was very disappointed in this effort. I really wanted to like this movie. It should have been far better than it wound up, but at least I know now why the movie never made a name for itself.

Watched Coppola/Wim Wender's "Hammett" again this past w/e- the film grows on me- has a flavour I like- the detective genre mixed with post-turn of the 20th century San Francisco- and the fact that SO MUCH is done on soundstages gives it a surreal quality. The film's production history has always been interesting (Frederick Forrest and Marilu Henner got married and divorced during it's long, tumultuous halt-run production). But, if you have never seen this or heard the John Barry score- you should. At least the score. It's to be placed in the Barry category called "unusual"- piano melodic and a lot of strained strings prevail- giving it a gin-soaked, withdrawn feel that still tugs through a foggy SF even when it's clear. A dubious above-ground underworld sucks all the characters and audience into a not-so-licentious but rather everyday (same then as today) corrupt city power structure. The film and score play off of each other, intertwining, massaging and playing out a tale of woe, misbegotten friendship and a lusty disgust for those in-power at that unique place by the bay. If ANYthing can be said of this film- it's that it has character-a-plenty and that includes the score