Farewell, My Lovely

Robert Mitchum quite wittily narrates as well as acts in this rather dry adaptation of Raymond Chandler's novel. He's the curmudgeonly PI eking out a living off the back of familial discord and martial peccadilloes. After saving him from an hail of bullets, "Marlowe" is engaged by the monosyllabic "Moose" (Jack O'Halloran) to help him track down his missing gal "Velma". The thing is, once his investigations begin to bear fruit he discovers himself in quite a pickle. She has moved on, and up, and has no desire to be found or to have her past life paraded in front of her new husband. Moreover, en route to his solution he also finds himself embroiled in some additional machinations with "Marriott" (Anthony Zerbe) who offers him an huge $15,000 just to hold his hand at a a dodgy blackmail exchange. Of course that doesn't go to plan and as the body counts start to mount up, he realises that the two jobs are perilously connected. Not as perilous for him as for poor old "Jessie" (a scene stealing but underused Sylvia Miles) who used to hang out with the missing "Velma" and should probably just have kept her head down. Meantime, his harassed police pal "Nulty" (John Ireland) is under increasing pressure to sort this mess out, and if that means throwing "Marlowe" to the wolves, then all the better for the powers that be. As these internecine threads all start to knit together, it's not too difficult for him (or us) to realise who has most to lose here, and is pulling the murderous strings. It's quite a decent story and Mitchum is always competent enough in these hard-man, boozy cynic, sort of roles, but Charlotte Rampling is really unconvincing and Zerbe totally one-dimensional as the pace of the film just never really gets out of first gear - despite there being plenty in the book to intrigue us. It's probably a thriller than would have delivered better forty years earlier, in monochrome, with more seediness and grime. As it is, there's something all a bit too sterile and verbose about it. It's all quite watchable but nothing special.