The Worst Film Ever

ridiculous rating

A Brilliant Conflict

Entertaining from beginning to end, it maintains the spirit of the franchise while establishing it's own seal with a fun cast

I've meant to post a review of this ground-breaking series for some time. The untimely passing of Powers Boothe this week has goaded me into action...To sum up: this series is not just the best adaptation of Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe, it's the *only* adaptation that really manages to to remain true to the letter and the spirit of the books. Amazing, but true.Humphrey Bogart was charming as Marlowe, of course... but his Big Sleep (especially the best-known edit) is 99% Howard Hawks, and should have a 'may contain traces of Chandler' warning on the label. What's more, Bogey couldn't have been much less like the character described by Chandler. In fact, Chandler's own ideal Marlowe is said to have been Cary Grant, which gives you some idea of just how far off-track Bogart, the geriatric Mitchum, and others have been. (Let us not even speak of Dick Powell.) Robert Montgomery could have been good, but he loused it up with that stupid first-person camera business, which has never worked and never will. Astoundingly, the best Marlowe prior to Boothe was Elliott Gould, in Altman's modernized, revisionist yet nonetheless evocative Long Goodbye. (EDIT: forgot to mention James Garner, who was very good, though a bit more Rockford than Marlowe.)But Powers Boothe was an even more appropriate choice. He had just the right age, just the right gravitas - the world-weary toughness of a Bogart or Mitchum, but also the class, the energy and the good looks described by Chandler. He also had the advantage of being less familiar. When you looked at Boothe you didn't see a movie star - you saw Marlowe, a hard-working gumshoe, and nobody else.The Boothe series also marked a rare attempt to include the *most* significant character from Chandler's stories: the city of Los Angeles. (The best previous attempt was, again, Altman's Long Goodbye.) Hawks' Big Sleep is set-bound, and could be taking place in New York as easily as LA. Mitchum's Marlowe was set in England - a travesty! The Powers Boothe series at least attempted to capture some of the gaudy, steamy, crazy city that Chandler created in his writing. Ironically, the series was not filmed in Hollywooed, but in Toronto, which gives you some idea of what can be done with a bit of creative camera work and a few judiciously-chosen locations.Another very cool thing about this series is that instead of adapting The Big Sleep - YET AGAIN - it adapts some of Chandler's excellent short stories. We get that flavorful dialog, those evocative descriptions, and the dark noir-ish plots - all of them fresh and barely familiar to even the most devoted Marlowe fans.Obviously, it's hard to beat Bogey and Hawks for sheer entertainment value. Or Altman for quirky, innovative filmmaking. But when it comes to all-out fidelity to the cherished Chandler stories, Powers Boothe in Philip Marlowe Private Eye has no rival.

I wanted to enjoy HBO's mid-eighties attempt to revive Phillip Marlowe, but the series never quite worked for me. The producer's self-conscious attempt to recreate a time and place and style of film-making remained just that: self-conscious. What may have also thrown me off was that the first episode I watched, "The King in Yellow," begins with a disc jockey playing a twelve-inch vinyl LP, a format that Columbia Records introduced in 1948 for long-form music, such as classical and Broadway; pop music and the kind of jazz the DJ was playing came out that year on ten-inch LPs and didn't graduate to twelve-inch till around 1950-51. So naturally I'm thinking the story takes place in the early fifties, until the cars and a few other things make it obvious that the time is really a dozen years earlier. Why didn't somebody realize the guy should have been playing a 78-rpm record? You can find them at any Salvation Army shop. The whole point of recreating a period piece is that you have to get the period right and not make obvious, boneheaded mistakes. I was also struck by how poorly the filmmakers generally used Los Angeles, a city with many evocative old neighborhoods and wonderful buildings that haven't changed much in the last seventy years. One "King in Yellow" scene, shot at the tower apartments near the Hollywood Bowl where Eliot Gould's Phillip Marlow lived in Robert Altman's 1973 "The Long Goodbye," showed that somebody had the right idea, but maybe the low budget kept most of the action confined to sound stages, which are rarely convincing. Oh, and some of the actors were amateurish and the dialog was often weak. Since a real noir hound could have had great fun with this show, HBO's Marlowe seems more like a missed opportunity than anything else.

I remember watching the first season of this when it came out and absolutely adored it. Powers Boothe's portrayal was just right. It was around the same time that Jeremy Brett's Sherlock Holmes first aired, so we were spoilt for quality detective drama. If I recall correctly, it was part financed by London Weekend Television (part of the ITV network at the time) and shown on ITV in prime time. I recall them announcing that, even though the show was popular, they would not be making any more after the initial five due to it being so expensive. Nearly every item in the show was a genuine period piece, with very little being reproduced. This, and the fact that it was shot in the UK, made it extremely costly. The second series was never shown properly in the UK. Odd episodes would turn up in the early hours of the morning and, although the production values were not as good, the shows were still enjoyable. Hopefully someone will produce a restored version of the shows on DVD (previous comments claim that the quality is not too good). I also think it's time for Marlowe to appear again. James Caan's version in "Poodle Springs" didn't quite work as I thought he was a little too old for the role. Ideally, Marlowe should be in his late thirties/early forties: young enough to take (or throw) a punch, but old enough to have "been around the block" a few times. Ten years ago, Harrison Ford would have been ideal, but now I'm not sure. Any ideas .... ?

This was a great show. I know there have been lots of versions of "Phillip Marlowe" on film and television, from Humphrey Bogart to Robert Mitchum and perhaps beyond, but this is was my first exposure to this character, and I remember it fondly.I was just thinking about how I miss cop/P.I. films and TV shows of the Film Noir/"fedoras and raincoats" genre, and this old HBO program- even if only for 11 episodes- suddenly became a vivid memory that came to mind. This was also my first introduction to this whole genre, which I got to explore further and in greater depth in films of the WWII and postwar period- and later works that have paid tribute to this genre and all the actors, directors, and characters such as "Phillip Marlowe" that were a part of it.This was a great character, and I really enjoyed this show- and hope to see "Phillip Marlowe" make an appearance in the future on the big or small screen...