The Long Goodbye

Rating ****

Whenever I read a Raymond Chandler novel, Philipe Marlowe always whistles to the tune of the whisky-glugging, chain smoking pulp detective prototype; the type that you automatically envisage with a raised trenchcoat collar, perched against the lamp post gazing sluggishly at the smoke trail from his cigarette in the flickers of the street light.

And whilst Humphrey Bogart in The Big Sleep decides to play along to this image, Robert Altman decides to upturn the idea of it all by chiselling down the verbal slinging matches between the characters to a slow drawl in the piercing glaze of the Californian sun.

The character itself is rebrandished by Elliout Gould as a scruff-ball cynical detective whose words don't so much skim the surface of his tongue as stumble out in a stream of mutterings. And alienated by a city of perfectly manicured boulevards and health-conscious hedonistic yoga-frumps, he meanders through a strew of murdered wives, topless brownie-craving neighbourhood hippies, actress-impersonating attendants, cats with hyperefined taste buds and coke-bottle itchy gangsters.

All tuned to the whipsy notes of John Williams theme song played again and again a la Sam.