Bruce Lee Movie:

Marlowe Reviews:
Garner as Marlowe
2008-11-11 - I remember seeing this as a youth,and enjoyed it then as now. I got a little more excited then at Rita Moreno's strip tease then, but I was an impressionable 13! She is still a beauty, and the movie has that dry Garner approach to humor that I find refreshing with all the "in you face" stuff today. The twist at the end is great too.

Chandler and Garner
2008-09-05 - The third actor to play Raymond Chandler's world-weary private eye, Garner brings his laid back charm to this adaption of the novel "The Little Sister". Different from Bogie or Dick Powell -- as well as his successors, Elliot Gould (THE LONG GOODBYE), Robert Mitchum (FAREWELL MY LOVELY & THE BIG SLEEP) and Powers Boothe (the HBO series from the mid 1980's). Garner brings his own brand of toughness to the part. Best remembered for Bruce Lee's "flying" sequence. Top notch cast also includes Gayle Hunnicutt (who would years later in an episode of the Powers Boothe series), Carroll O'Connor, William Daniels and Rita Moreno.

2.5, maybe...
2002-12-16 - Raymond Chandler's wisecracking, star-crossed private eye Philip Marlowe is transplanted into the swinging '60s where hopheads, strippers and psychiatrists join the usual compliment of thugs and goons that make his life miserable. James Garner gets a nice dry run for the "Rockford Files" TV show, while Rita Moreno bares all in her climactic stripping scene. Honestly, the script is not that great -- for the life of me I couldn't actually figure out who did what, or why... But it's still a fun film, in a campy kinda way. The film's one truly great moment is a scene is with Caroll O'Connor as a police detective who, having wearied of playing Marlowe's schnook, bursts into a violent tirade about how lousy his job is, and nearly beats the handcuffed private eye to death. It's a scene that could stand tasteful recycling elsewhere and, I suspect, was only in the film because O'Connor improv-ed it and made *something* good happen in this otherwise somewhat addled production...

Garner as Private Eye as Tenatious as a Bobo Doll
2002-07-13 - Garner wins our sympathy as a battered P.I. who's client doesn't like him and neither do the thugs who cross his path. This movie will make you feel like laughing and crying at the some time. But you know that Marlowe is tough enough to come out on top at the end of the day. Sort of corny in a Seventies kind of way, Marlowe is definitely comforting mind candy so curl up with a bowl of popcorn and enjoy!

"Rockford Files"+ "Shaft" = "Marlowe" A terrible combonation
2001-12-31 - The title for this review says it all, it's exactly what "Marlowe" is. This is an atrocity.
Who could forget the performances that shaped Marlowe's film persona. Bogart, Mitchum, and even Powers Boothe. They knew how to do it. Garner on the other hand serves up a weak precursor to his "Rockford" role. As for the musical score and
overall tone of the film, it recalls movies like "Shaft" and too a lesser and unflattering extent "James Bond." (title sequence) More than anything else "Marlowe" is pathetic, it is pathetic because
it could have been well done, if anyone in the cast or crew had given any sort of consideration to the source material. Why did they have to ruin it? It isn't as if the public wouldn't have enjoyed a genuine effort. Yes, America was entering the seventies and movies of this sort were probably a big box office draw. But, just six years later Hollywood made "Farewell, My Lovely," and they made it well staying true to Chandler.
Now, that film is a modern classic among Chandler fans. "Marlowe" had the potential to do the same, but chose instead to drown itself in a cesspool of seventies sludge. That is truly sad.