You won't be disappointed!

Very well executed

Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

This is follow up to "Harper" and Paul Newman reprises his role as a private detective loosely based on Ross MacDonald's Lew Archer. The plot is based around Harper being a few years older but basically the same style PI you came to like in Harper. He is smart and has a drive to finish a case; even if he ends up in trouble. You get a mix of Joanne Woodward, Melanie Griffith (as a teen), Tony Franciosa (doing a very good job acting) and a stellar supporting cast. There are a lot of twists and turns, a lot of dialog, one shootout - it's Newman as Harper! Set in pre-Katrina New Orleans, "The Drowning Pool" is a rich stew of intrigue, great cast performances and classic MacDonald twists and turns within a dangerously dysfunctional family. Paul Newman completely inhabits Lew Harper's character, the settings are alternately grand and deliciously seedy, and the cinematography is excellent. A very young Melany Griffith place the infant terrible' in this film, not bad for a kid breaking into the movie game. But the chief action focuses on Newman and he does not disappoint. There's also some interesting plot points involving oil off the coast, and the resulting corruption of the police as money was shovelled around to secure drilling rights.Overall rating: 8 out of 10.

This is one of the best films Newman made in a very distinguished career. It's his second performance as Lew Harper and this time he is away from his usual California stamping grounds. There are some very fine performances including a knock-out appearance from a very young Melanie Griffith. Ross MacDonald was one of the most thoughtful detective writers, with great plots and strong characterisations. If I had to choose one performance to highlight it would be Tony Franciosa as a tough but decent police chief. But there are no bad performances at all. And in this story, as with many others MacDonald wrote, the motive driving the villainous Kilbourne (brilliantly played by Murray Hamilton,) is big enough to justify the story. But something even darker is at work as we discover. A great and underrated film.

This film is finally decent and the suspense is quite OK, though with some little thinking we could think the end right from the very beginning. I can't tell you how otherwise you may yell SPOILER in about twenty-five languages including Arabic and Hebrew, both modern and old. Louisiana is there in front of you, New Orleans, a little bit though not the Mardi Gras festivities, too bad, but the bayous quite a lot, though they seem to look like the Everglades in Florida. Well I must be fantasizing or I must have watched too many Miami Vice-Squad series. One thing is sure down south they sure have an accent and they sure do not work the same way as in any other part of the world. But I guess they kill the same, they embezzle the same, they corrupt the same as anywhere else in the whole world. With money, for money, under the influence and the smell of money. What a universal devil those satanic green backs are and you can't escape them, no matter how much money you yourself have, no matter how many bodyguards you may have, no matter how many guns you may be able to brandish, no matter how many corrupted fiendish friends you must be able to have in the wings. A bullet or some pills will do the job quite well. That's the main interest of a private eye series: it can without any reserve reveal the depth of the guano we are living in all the time and every day, and in this case you can't imagine, and a "normal" cops series will not show you how decayed any police department must be. Well even Dexter is slightly short on that one. I liked the trickiness and intricacies of the plot, the unbearable arrogance of local cops, the thickness of the local accent, the superb local streetcars called Desire, but I didn't see one alligator, too bad. They must have been gone on vacation, or maybe they had been substituted with caimans or crocodiles, who knows, but I would have enjoyed a bowl of alligator soup in a Rue Royale restaurant. Run to that film, it is funny, more strange than ah ah. And girls are just what they are supposed to be, big traps with long teeth, but they bark more than they bite.Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne, University Paris 8 Saint Denis, University Paris 12 Créteil, CEGID

Private detective Lew Harper investigates a blackmail plot in Louisiana bayou country.He gets the assignment from his old flame Iris.The Drowning Pool (1975) is a sequel to Harper (1966), which I haven't seen yet.This film is directed by Stuarts Rosenberg and it's based on Ross Macdonald's novel.Tracy Keenan Wynn wrote the script.Paul Newman is very cool as Lew Harper.Joanne Woodward, who was the wife of Newman for 50 years plays Iris Devereaux.The young Melanie Griffith is her daughter Schuyler.The climax scene is really something.Harper and Kilbourne's wife Mavis are locked in a hydrotherapy room and the water starts rising to the ceiling.That and other sticky situations you can find from The Drowning Pool.