Steinesongo Too many fans seem to be blown away

Libramedi Intense, gripping, stylish and poignant

Cleveronix A different way of telling a story

Roxie The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

A_Different_Drummer The 70s. You had to be there.The cheap production standards of the 50s were an attempt to mass produce films the way you would would mass produce shoes. The 60s was an experimental era the same way the children of the 60s were experimenting with everything they could get their hands on.By the 70s films had become more contemplative. The folks behind this little gem decided it was time somebody wrote a script that captured the very essence of the film noires from the 40s.Notice I emphasized the script first, because the rest seems almost an afterthought. Make no mistake. Finney is brilliant as the protagonist comic who wants to be a shamus, a gumshoe, but without that magical script there would be no movie.The script is brilliant. You could turn the picture off and simply listen to the soundtrack and not miss much. ITS THAT GOOD.One scene in particular where Eddie has to seduce an office girl to get an address seems a riff off Bogey in BIG SLEEP. But with better and faster dialog.The fact that even the IMDb tag for the film says "comedy" -- WHICH IT WAS NOT -- tells you how lost this gem is in the annals of film.Whitelaw is great. Janice Rule steals her few scenes.Recommended.

LouE15 What a joy to watch this oddity from the great British director Stephen Frears' back catalogue on telly here recently. But because of certain parts in it, I can sort of see why it has largely stayed in 1971, a cult rather than a mainstream success. The story is a funny and modern take on a classic film noir. Being a Stephen Frears film, it's overflowing with observant details that make up a free-flowing, vivid picture of life in 1971 in the mind of a young man, Eddie Ginley (a young and handsome Albert Finney) who works nights as a bingo caller in a nightclub but dreams of a future as a stand-up comic. His overachieving brother has "run off with his best girl"; he's a dreamer, obsessed with crime fiction, and wants to be a detective, and he's about to get what he wants in spades. (Intermittent spoilers from here on in.)It's hard to tell now (or have I lost my sense of irony?) whether Eddie's cheesy stand-up routine and his casual racism are ironic character elements or for real. The 70s really were the dark ages, so nothing would surprise me now. I don't think I'm being oversensitive: his comments to the sole black character, Danny Azinge, are horribly racist and unsubtle and unfunny. Anyone who watched "Bless this House" or "The Black & White Minstrel Show" in the 70s, and any first and second generation Black Britons will tell you that it's all too likely to have been for real. Even Danny's terrific punch to Eddie's solar plexus – serves him right – doesn't wholly compensate for the nasty taste those lines left in my mouth.But I love, love, love the witty and cheeky takes on 40s noir and Chandleresque dialogue and story structure. The sexual tension between Eddie and his ex, now sister in law, Ellen (a stately Billie Whitelaw), crackles along. The Cain & Abel backstory is nicely played out. Eddie's brother William is the perfect foil: enough of a "schmuck" to make Eddie appealing, but sensible enough to be plausible second choice for Ellen.Some parts of the film now work best as social documentary; the 1971 era fire engine, the now sadly extinct open-backed red buses; Ellen's 'snazzy' car (sounds like a super-fast tractor); the comment on Liverpool "it's not a gun town, is it?". I think Frears understood the social significance of filming realistic scenes in a dismal unemployment office, and in the working men's club; you see it in the love he shows the building, the head honcho with his fake celebrity portraits; the reactions of the crowd. The story's pretty engrossing, and the way it's played out has all the hallmarks of a good Frears film, but it's the central love story that I find appealing. You look at the two men in her life and you understand why Ellen made the decision she did. Charming and endearing as Eddie is, and as she certainly still finds him, she got tired of waiting for him to stop being a dreamy low-rent clown. Their sad, simple kisses reflect that. He 'grows up' by the time the film reaches its conclusion, but by then it's all far too late. His life's romance is dead, but his life begins. Lovely stuff.

Gideon Freud "Exhilirated" was the way my father felt, as he emerged from the new Scala cinema in Kings Cross, after watching Albert Finney in Gumshoe sometime in the 1970s. He loves the writing of Raymond Chandler and Dashiel Hammett. The idea of a fellow aficionado so caught up in the idea of being Philip Marlowe that he places an advertisement in the local Liverpool paper offering his services in 1972 as though he were the fictional private eye in California of the 1940s and is then caught up in a case he doesn't understand but which he sets out to follow nonetheless as though he was the legendary hero of those mean streets completely captivated him. The fast talking repartee. The refusal to compromise. And the gun. It comes in at the beginning. It is undoubtedly real - in an England where there are no guns. Will Finney who carries it everywhere with him ever get to fire it? Prepare to enjoy a pacey, brilliantly written plot which refreshingly expects the audience to have the knowledge and intelligence to keep up and be swept away. Anyone who knows my father will know that this review was really written by him!

aromatic-2 An excellent cast does its utmost, but the results can be characterized as uneven at best. This movie had many clever ideas, and should have saved half of them for another film. It also alternates uncomfortable between laughing at its characters and laughing with them. Still, there are several brilliant scenes that will reward those with the tenacity to stick with it, especially in the film's last third. My rating -- 6/10.