Who payed the critics

Some things I liked some I did not.

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

"The Big Sleep" '78 is not so much a remake of the earlier Howard Hawks favorite as a more faithful reading of the Raymond Chandler novel, albeit transposed by screenwriter / director Michael Winner ("Death Wish") to modern day London. A very appealing Robert Mitchum reprises the role of private eye Philip Marlowe (after his portrayal in "Farewell, My Lovely" in 1975), hired by dying American military man General Sternwood (James Stewart, who makes the most of two brief scenes). The case is a matter of investigating a blackmailer...at least, that would *seem* to be the case. As Marlowe finds out, there's an awful lot going on here, but he handles all of it in great style.Winner treats this material with quite a bit of humor, rendering it positively silly on a frequent basis. It makes one believe that he had contempt for it. But Chandlers' story is fortunately still engrossing, and it's the kind of thing that really keeps viewers on their toes, trying to pay attention to all the details and twists. (Since there's much exposition to digest, viewers can't afford to let their attention wander.) The film *looks* absolutely great, with fine use of locations and lovely photography. It's spiced up with some (tastefully done) nudity, but it's never ever very violent.The main draw is a sterling group of American and British actors. Sarah Miles, Richard Boone, Joan Collins, Edward Fox, John Mills, Oliver Reed (typically amusing as a threatening gangster / casino owner), Harry Andrews, Colin Blakely, Richard Todd, Diana Quick, and James Donald are all present and accounted for. Mitchum anchors the proceedings with his colorful performance, but dragging things down quite a bit is the way overdone airhead shtick by Candy Clark, playing Sternwoods' younger daughter. Usually she's pretty reliable, but here she's much too annoying. Mitchum and company do have fun with the sometimes witty and lively dialogue.Well paced, and fairly energetic, but overall not especially memorable. Some people might want to just revisit the Bogie and Bacall version instead.Six out of 10.

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.

After years of slowly perverting the hard-boiled 40s purity of Chandler's creation with movies like Marlowe and The Long Goodbye that put Marlowe increasingly at odds with the modern times, the series went back to its 1940s roots in 1974 with Farewell My Lovely and introduced Mitchum as Marlowe, perfectly cast in all of his lantern-jawed, world weariness. So why did the makers of this, its sequel, decide to come back to the present and move the setting from Cal. to England? Chandler's plot, which features such items as drug use and underground pornography, shocked its 1940s readership. Re-located to anything goes, swinging-70s London, none of this stuff seems at all adequate motivation for a murder spree - heck, it would make a tame weekend for David Bowie - and this severely blunts the plot's impact. And if no compelling motivation exists for murder, who cares whodunnit? This is the problem with updating the setting of an older story without proper regard for changing historical context: it can weaken essential story elements that drive the plot. That is what happened here. The script still crackles with remnants of Chandler's tough guy talk and Mitchum is still good as Marlowe, world-weary as all get out, yet willing to pitch in to help a dame, but the rest of it works less well and the lack of a noir visual aesthetic makes it all less interesting to watch, too. London doesn't look gritty, just sooty, and the unsavory thugs floating at the edges of the movie seem less scary than what you would have encountered in a mid- 70s punk rock dive. It's not bad, just lame.

What a disappointment! Sweeping overacting and a death scene by Richard Boone out of the silent film era. It felt like the director was holding Mitchum back from a true tough guy persona. Perky 70's music just added to the trash this movie is. Read the book! These characters were not real in any sense. Unfortunately, I expected each plot twist and waited for cameos by 'stars', all distracting from the story. Everything was much too bright. This is Film Noir that isn't. Marlowe's digs were much too nice... and so were the bad guys. The bad girls were not much better. They were not flirty enough to be sexy and not half bad enough to be the evil girls they should have been. I expected Diana Rigg and Patrick McNee to pop up and announce, "Welcome to an Avengers episode".