Sadly Over-hyped

Excellent, a Must See

Close shines in drama with strong language, adult themes.

There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

Fascinating as a perverse version of the Raymond Chandler classic crime novel which is one of the quintessential film noir, this is equally as disturbingly bad as the unnecessary remake of "The Postman Always Rings Twice". Saved in small part by a fascinating cast of veterans and now practically forgotten not quite stars of the late 1970's, lead by film noir veteran Robert Mitchum. Dying elderly James Stewart is being blackmailed in regards to his loony daughter Candy Clark, and hires Mitchum to help him avoid having to pay out. Clark leads Mitchum to murder, and more intrigue befalls Mitchum thanks to the older daughter, Sarah Miles, who has plenty of secrets of her own. More weird characters come in and out of the convoluted tale which features Joan Colin's as a book store clerk who responds to Mitchum's inquiry of "Do you sell books?" with the lame retort, "What does this look like, a banana?". Richard Boone, Harry Andrews and Oliver Reed are among the other strange characters in the tale that just continuously just gets more and more perverted.Hints of pornography, homosexuality and drug abuse add to the modern twists of the plot that really don't move it forward. It lacks the romance and intrigue mixed together in the original. It seems to have been rushed together to capitalize on the success of the modern film noir, " Chinatown", which also focused on a powerful man and his strange off-spring. Candy Clark's performance is laughably over the top, and the pre-"Dynasty" Joan Collins seems a bit desperate. Like other Sir Lew Grade produced all-star films, it has a rushed sense to it, more about the quantity of names rather than the quality of the script.

A strange creature is Michael Winner...Has he been secretly mocking the 'industry' he works in for the past fifty years? Or is he just a pompous old fool who couldn't make a public information film? Perhaps no one will ever know!The big sleep however, is one of Winner's better films. Largely due to a great script (he adheres closely to the book despite the film being set in England) and the superb acting of Robert Mitchum. The best bit in the film is watching Mitchum and a comely Joan Collins rolling around on the carpet; After taking her pistol, a dishevelled Mitchum looks on whilst Collins lets out an orgasmic sign and then lights a ciggy, great stuff!

This remake of the Raymond Chandler novel is an object lesson in bad film-making. It should have been a contender - Robert Mitchum had been ideally cast as Philip Marlowe in 1975's Farewell, My Lovely and he is surrounded here by some high calibre talent. But British director Michael Winner so messes up the script, the direction and the mis-en-scene that the film is the very definition of poor. At times it looks as though someone has conned a load of old actors into performing in their home movie shoot. Perhaps this film is a joke on the cast, many of whom were old enough to be heading for "the big sleep" themselves and so were the butt of Winner's sick joke.Mitchum walks through the film without shaming himself too much (although he shouldn't run or fight at this age); some of the other actors give the worst performances of their career: James Stewart is beyond self-parody as the dying General; Sarah Miles lolls her tongue whilst sporting an afro perm (!), Richard Boon grimaces and growls to entirely comic effect and Candy Clark does the kind of acting one expects to see in an early John Waters film - a kind of mickey-take of acting - which is funny when Waters' cast does it deliberately but embarrassing when Clark (a promising actress previously) does it for supposedly serious effect here. A couple of the English actors, such as Richard Todd and John Mills, acquit themselves with dignity, although Edward Fox is hilariously bad in his scenes, plummy accent chewing words to pulp. Any film where Joan Collins gives one of the most convincing performances has got to be going wrong somewhere...Winner's script is a dog's dinner. He sets up the expectation that he's going to follow the convention whereby we only see and find out what Marlowe sees and finds out (a staple of detective films) and then adds random cutaways to events which Marlowe was not present at - e.g. the car going into the Thames - as well as plonking a lot of mismanaged flashbacks into the action every time anyone begins to talk about what has happened in the backstory. As usual with Winner, the film is cut with the finnesse of a village butcher, and setting the grimy noir in the posher areas of London and the English countryside does nothing to conjure the seamy world of the book.All in all, a pretty dismal addition to the list of Chandler adaptations, but worth seeing for the unintentional laughs (there are plenty) and as a lesson in how not to make a film, or what parts not to choose when you're an ageing actor.

I had mild hopes for this film from the start. Robert Mitchum, a great actor in his day, was a little long in the tooth to be playing the detective. And it was set, oddly, in London and not in LA. Soon into the picture, not only did it barely live up to my low expectations, but it made me groan on several occasions.The ham-fisted acting, especially on the part of Candy Clark (was she directed to act that retarded or was it her idea?) and sterile scenery were especially hard to take. Some of the actors seemed like set dressings rather than characters. Richard Boone, looking as drunk as ever, plods through this movie for no apparent reason. The only thing memorable about Sarah Miles was her enormous triangle-cut hair, which did nothing more than annoy me.And what was Marlowe doing in expensive clothes and wearing a Rolex watch? Apparently being honest pays far more than he lets on.There are so many better Marlowes out there, so unless you're a real Chandler fan, avoid this one (same goes for Altman's The Long Goodbye and Robert Montgomery's Lady in the Lake).