The Drowning Pool (Stuart Rosenberg, 1975)

Second Harper movie and somehow I like it a bit more than the first one. Which is strange in a way because (a) I don’t usually go for crime stories that involve our hero personal shit and (b) don’t like crime stories that take place outside the big cities. They belong to urban jungles right?

Paul Newman is still overdoing his character a bit too comically for my taste, but Drowning Pool is much darker than its predecessor. It also deals with more sinister topics than “simple” greed and successfully manages to merge couple of fucked up family dramas into crime/mystery. Don’t get me wrong – it’s still as hard boiled as they come and body count reaches quite respectable number at the end!

Supporting cast is not such an all-star affair as in the first one but they somehow function together even better. Joanne Woodward is of course great but real mini-star here is Murray Hamilton who plays villain perfectly. He steals every scene he’s in even from the mighty Mr. Newman. 

Good stuff indeed. Probably mostly well-known for its ending climax escape scene but I liked it because of its dark moody noir atmosphere and well developed story that works on many levels. It feels very modern even today and – as Harper – doesn’t age at all.

8/10

Harper (Jack Smight, 1966)

Ross Macdonald is probably my second favorite crime author of the classical pulp era (first one - needless really to point out - being Chandler) and his Lew Archer the second coolest P.I. ever (after you know of course who being the first one). Apparently Paul Newman liked him a lot also and was happy to play the part under one condition – name Archer needed to be substituted with Harper because letter H was his lucky one (after filming The Hustler and Hud).

And he’s okay but I think he’s overdoing the part just a little bit. Yes, we know he’s supposed to be cynical but sometimes he’s acting like he’s being in comedy and not in a hard-boiled crime. I don't know, there are just too many of those facial grimaces. He is not at all bad and doesn’t damage the movie (like Frank Sinatra for example might) and especially his lines with witty dialogues and one-liners are delivered perfectly. But credits for that probably go more to its brilliant literary source.

Anyways, he’s okay but supporting cast is magnificent. Especially Lauren Bacall, Shelley Winters (once again!!!) and Janet Leigh. Bacall seems to be having really good time filming this and she plays her bitchy character to perfection. Real joy to watch, she was so cool!

Movie too is okay but has few faults. With almost two hours of running time it is for sure too long for mystery flick and story gets too convoluted. It doesn’t drag on and it never gets boring but both characters introductions and suspense building simply take too long. Seems like screenwriters tried too hard to stick to the book as much as possible when adapting it. Which was probably not needed since it was published in 1949 so they could afford a bit of tweaking it. I think it would be better to drop some character (like Harper’s wife and whole thing about divorce) or sub-plots altogether. Who knows…

Still a great movie and very enjoyable to see every few years or so, it doesn’t age at all! And last thing totally worth mentioning is hilarious poster – I simply must give Harper an extra star for it!

8/10