Tony43

For years, I thought I was going out of my mind every time I saw this classic detective story/film noir. Each time it screened on TV, it seemed to be different. New scenes would crop up; scenes I was certain I had seen in the past were suddenly missing. And always, the plot made no real sense.

Blame it all on Lauren Bacall. She'd been a huge hit in "To Have and to Have Not," playing opposite Bogart in her screen debut. So Warners, eager to capitalize on her natural sex appeal, had rushed her into another film, "Confidential Agent," where she played opposite Charles Boyer. They, it turned out, had no chemistry and the picture bombed. But by the time that had happened, Bogie and Betty had wrapped Bacall's third film, "The Big Sleep." So Warners held up its release so they could shoot some new scenes that would make Bacall look good.

The result was that a couple of different versions of this classic exist today and when you toss in the cutting for TV, you wind up with a mishmash of scenes that leave you guessing as to what the film is all about, who killed whom, and how could writers of the caliber of Raymond Chandler (author of the original novel) William Faulkner and Jules Furthman come up with this mess.

My favorite scene takes place at the rural gambling casino operated by Eddie Mars. There, in a side room, we come upon Bacall singing an obviously heavily rehearsed song with a whole group of backup singers providing harmony. There is no prior reference to Bacall's character being a singer and no further reference to her song in the rest of the movie.

But the real stunner is Eddie Mars' blond wife, played in her one and only scene toward the end of the film, by different actresses in the two main versions of the film.

Never mind. This picture has lots of crackling good Howard Hawks style dialogue and a great, slick Warners film noir atmosphere. Both Bogie and Betty are at the top of their games and are surrounded by great supporting players, from Dorothy Malone to Elisha Cook Jr and B-Western star Bob Steele, who was positively scary when he played a modern day killer.

Watch this one, because try as they might, nobody does this kind of work today.

This is apparently a screen version of a comic book or a video game, the kind of junk that's turning the minds of young Americans to mush. The plot is that an everyman unhappy with his boring life gets a chance to become an over trained assassin and kill a lot of people, in part to avenge the murder of his father, even though he never knew the old man. That's about all the plot there is here. Charcterization? That's pretty much missing, too. The male star is forgettable because he is almost completely devoid of personality. But he fits right in at the DeCaprio, Toby McGuire school of wimps as heroes.

Morgan Freeman non-acts his way through the number three staring role.

That leaves the woman upon whom box office success rests ---Angelina Jolie. She flashes a couple of smiles, but mostly just hangs around looking enigmatic. Actually, her part could have been played by almost anyone, but she played it, so she is responsible for fostering this non stop exercise in teaching kids violence.

She should be ashamed of herself. She is capable of so much more.

I wanted my eight bucks back when this one was over, but I can never get back the two hours of my life wasted on this mess.