Old-style, meticulously plotted and paced private-eye case steers perilously close to parody (Robert Mitchum's wry first-person narration, the bluesy horn solo on the soundtrack, Charlotte Rampling's Bacall impersonation). But Dick Richards's steady-handed direction holds it to a course so straight and sure that it achieves instead a kind of fundamentalist rigor. This early Raymond Chandler novel, filmed twice before in the Forties, has been tampered with only slightly and only helpfully: a couple of messy spots have been tidied up and a couple of nice gimmicks have been added (the detective follows DiMaggio's 56-game hitting streak in the daily papers all the while that he pursues his own grueling dog-days ordeal). And it's been decked out with an eerie, indelible image: homely men in blue and gray suits wandering in a deceitful, intimidating environment of lurid colored lights and vulgar cluttered decors -- like the interior of a pinball machine. (1975) — Duncan Shepherd
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