Touches You

As Good As It Gets

Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.

One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

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!

Admittedly, this remake can't compare to the original 1946 film starring Humphrey Bogart... but it has a value of it's own.The 1946 version of the film was very artfully scripted. It had to be, because two underlying themes of the plot (relating to homosexuality and pornography) couldn't be made explicit, in the original, owing to the sensibilities of the era. This led to the original film's only flaw: the plot's incomprehensibility, masked only by the brilliance of the direction and acting.By 1975, such social restrictions were gone, and the remake, set in England, instead of California, was able to be fully explicit, making the plot understandable for the first time. Robert Mitchum's subdued and smooth interpretation of Chandler's Phillip Marlowe was well suited to the script. I think this film is well worth watching, if for little other reason than a clear plot line and Mitchum's delightful under-acting of the lead role.

Most people would probably run a mile at the thought of Michael Winner getting his hands on the rights to film Raymond Chandler's masterpiece novel 'The Big Sleep'; but personally, I was rather excited at the prospect. Michael Winner may not be a great director; but his films generally turn out to be entertaining in spite of not being brilliant, and with a story as strong as this one; I felt confident that The Big Sleep would be a good film. However, as it turns out; this film is not as good as it could have been. The story focuses on private investigator Philip Marlowe. He is hired by an old man who goes by the name of General Sternwood to investigate a case of blackmail against one of his daughters. After meeting the daughters and some of the other main players involved, our hero soon comes to the conclusion that the blackmail doesn't really constitute a threat and becomes suspicious; leading to him thinking that everything seems to be more connected with the disappearance of the man's son in law, and decides to investigate that instead.For one reason or another, Michael Winner has decided to move things over to England; although the lead man remains American. This change in location has not really had an effect on the story; but it did leave Winner free to recruit an excellent roster of British stars. Among the names in the cast list are Oliver Reed, John Mills, Joan Collins, Richard Boone and Edward Fox. The film is lead by Robert Mitchum, who while not as great as Humphrey Bogart, still makes an excellent leading man and there's also enough room in the cast for an aging James Stewart. The film is a lot shorter than the earlier version of this story and Winner has really trimmed things down a lot, which means that the story is much more straight forward than it was in the 1946 film. This is not really a bad thing as it does mean that the film is easier to follow; although it also seems less expansive. The characters take something of a backseat too, with only the lead character getting any real development. Still, this is at least an entertaining thriller and I don't feel like I wasted my time watching it; although Howard Hawks' version is better.