Chandler

This private eye film is purely in the seventies mood, maybe more than KLUTE or THE LONG GOODBYE, produced the very same year. This one is really gloomy, slow paced, a pure product of this period. And Warren Oates contributes more than anything else in this atmosphere, because he was also the most iconic actor of this period, between late sixties and 1975, thanks mostly to Sam Peckinpah. He plays a terrific loser here, as he was in BRING ME THE HEAD OF ALFREDO GARCIA. The intrigue is worthless in terms of understanding, as any gumshoe plots, only spirit, atmosphere counts. A definitely underrated movie, the only one from this director.

This movie is seldom mentioned when people talk about neo noirs of the 70s, and it's not hard to understand why. Despite having a certain femme fatale icon from the 40-50s, nothing good that can be said about "Chandler".

The main problem i have with this movie is that it's just too bland. The dialog isn't even clichéd, it's worse, something out of a townhouse conversation with your wife on a saturday afternoon.

The actors bumble around, probably aware of the turkey they had the luck to sign up for, the action peaces are alright but nothing you haven't seen anywhere else, and the twist, well, there is none.

Also, it's hard to understand what exactly the movie was aiming at, it's not a parody, nor some sort of intellectual analysis of the noirs or a political statement of the 70s America, it's definitely not an action flick either.

Perhaps that's the movie's big problem. Most other noirs are either send-off, parodies or deconstructions of their predecessors, while this one is a "NOIR" just filmed in the 70s. It makes the viewer judge the movie on it's own merits, and lacking any, it sinks, just like the Packard in The Big Sleep.

2/10 for two things, Gloria Grahame and the fact that probably someone was watching this and thought, hey, I could do better, and did.

I saw this film when it was first released. The memory of how bad it was has stayed with me almost forty years. I didn't want to trust my own sentiments about the movie when I saw it, so I consulted a movie review published in a major metropolitan newspaper the next day- sentiment confirmed, the reviewer wrote that the movie was incoherent, indecipherable, and uninspiring. A little research reveals that the producer was star Leslie Caron's husband, thus the whiff of nepotism suggests the beginning for this awful film. The film's roster of many capable actors - Caron, Warren Oates, Scatman Crothers, Gloria Grahame, and James Sikking among others - suggests that it holds some promise. But the death of this film is attributable to its terrible screenplay. The "mystery" implicated is so obscure and so little revealed throughout the film that the viewer is left perplexed from scene to scene. The movie seems torn between being a detective mystery and an espionage thriller, but never settles upon one or the other. The sense of suspense is entirely absent. The main characters settle on playing dry, emotionless types in a fashion that inspires no empathy whatsoever. The cinematography is pedestrian. The result is that the hapless viewer loses interest in the characters, the plot, and, in the end, the film itself. I am little surprised that there is no version of this pathetic film available to purchase. I hope that if TCM finds a print of this film and feels compelled to air it that it is safely relegated to the 4:00 am slot.

Raymond Chandler (Warren Oates) quits his security job. Corrupt government official Ross J. Carmady is looking to take control of gangleader John Melchior. Bernie Oakman offers old acquaintance Chandler as a patsy and hires him to protect government witness Katherine Creighton from Melchior without telling her. He befriends her and rescues her from kidnappers.

The name seems to be there to confuse fans of Raymond Chandler who created hard-boiled private eye Philip Marlowe. Chandler is world-wearied but sadly he's lifeless. The movie has nothing. The directions are stiff and without style. It's a sad tired effort. Everybody seems to be moving at half speed. Its production problems are the least of the deficiencies. Carmady's plans are not explained well. The shooting style is horribly stiff. Warren Oates looks uncomfortably small. The story is slower than molasses. Even the car chase is badly done. This is amateur hour.

The "Trivia" page on IMDb claims the filmmakers protested because this film was re-cut by the studio to "simplify the plot". If so, that effort was a total failure, as this is one of the most incoherent narratives I've ever seen in a film -- I'd hate to have seen it before the plot was "simplified."

It's sad to see Warren with so little character to go on that even he can't do anything with the inept material. It's interesting to see Caron in '70s mode instead of her Hollywood-era glamour garb and persona, but it's sad to see her haplessly wander through this doing-a- favor-to-her-producer-husband dreck. She would actually later hook up with and marry the director, instead -- who, you'll note, never directed anything again, but did strictly 1st or 2nd A.D. work in TV from here on out. That oughta tell you enough right there.

I call this "interesting" because I have an automatic fondness for American films of this period, and this role does add perspective to Oates' otherwise fantastic 1971 output (Two- Lane Blacktop, The Hired Hand). But the "1940s detective as fish-out-of-water in 1970s L.A." theme, which is the only thing the movie really has to say, is sold in way too heavy- handed a manner. A similar theme would be far more effectively handled two years later in Altman's The Long Goodbye. And as far as Oates playing a hard-bitten guy on a doomed errand, three years on, he would give his definitive performance in Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia. If you haven't seen those, don't waste your time with this!