Interesteg What makes it different from others?

ChanFamous I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

Ogosmith Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

Nicole I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

JohnHowardReid We are looking at big-screen movies, either based on a Raymond Chandler novel or screen-played by Chandler.First off is The Falcon Takes Over (1942), which hardly marks a really auspicious beginning for Chandler or Marlowe on the screen. RKO purchased the screen rights to "Farewell, My Lovely" for a song and had no qualms in making it over for Michael Arlen's character, The Falcon, who figured in a series of sixteen "B" movies, starring George Sanders (the first four), John Calvert (the last three), and Sanders' real-life brother, Tom Conway (the ones in between). By the humble standards of the series "B", however, The Falcon Takes Over could be described as reasonably entertaining. Chandler's tense plot is preserved more or less intact. Only the characters have been changed. Sanders makes The Falcon suitably suave, whilst Lynn Bari provides a spirited heroine.

judy t Comparing this film to Chandler's novel or to Murder My Sweet - and I'm a huge fan of both - is pointless. This 'Falcon' is a terrific 40s programmer, and I enjoyed seeing how plot elements and characters from the novel were whipped up into a frothy and fun comedy. I've read all the bios on Chandler and knowing he loathed Hollywood, he probably loathed what RKO did to his magnum opus, but Falcon fans, and me, liked it. This is my first Falcon film, watched only because Lynn Bari played the female lead. My interest in seeing Bari's films comes from reading her superbly wonderful biography, 'Foxy Lady', and Bari is terrific here as the investigative reporter who could have solved this mystery all by herself. I've always liked George Sanders, and he doesn't disappoint. The Velma actress had the right vampish allure, but her hairstyle is jarring and I got distracted wondering why RKO didn't borrow Metro's Guilaroff to fix her wig. I laughed a lot at the comedians - Jenkins, Gleason and his sidekick, the Falcon's valet. All in all, I had a very enjoyable Saturday night at the movies.

bob the moo While out at a local club, Gay Lawrence finds himself close by when a man called Moose Malloy comes into the club looking for his Velma, killing the manager in the process of asking. The police pick up on the case but Gay starts searching for Velma. He picks up a lead that involves a meeting, before getting a call out of the blue from a man looking for help. When the 'case' turns out to be a trap designed to kill Gay, he finds himself in the middle of something bigger than he expected.I'm not sure why, after so many films, the Falcon series suddenly reached into Raymond Chandler for its source material. Perhaps it was the fact that Sanders was fed up doing the films and maybe they were trying to provide of a film for him to work with. Certainly this is a rather different entry in the series that manages to change some elements of the series while also keeping aspects that make it a Falcon film – however this is a weakness rather than a plus point because the two aspects detract from one another. Being the first filmed version of Farewell, My Lovely, this film gets off to a good start; in fact I was surprised to see Moose Malloy looking for Velma and I started to think maybe it was spoofing the film, until I realized that this was made a couple of years before the most famous version. The plot is dark and mysterious and is better delivered as noir – something that the Falcon film cannot do whilst trying to remain a Falcon film. So although the plot follows the source material well, it never really gets a tone that it deserves.The reason for this is that the material is mixed with the usual Falcon brand of humours and characters. Elements such as Goldy's quips and the discussions between O'Hara and his detective are funny but they don't fit well. Of course this hurts the Chandler material more than it hurts the Falcon series because the addition of a good plot helps add to the usual Falcon aspects – so it turns out to be a good Falcon film but a very average version of the Chandler story. The cast don't really help either, some failing on their own terms while others show their shortcomings when compared to different actors playing the same roles in other versions. Sanders was one film away from leaving the series – as with his suicide, when he had had his fill of things he simply stepped out without fuss. In his performance here you can see that his heart is not in it anymore - he makes little effort with the material given him although it is not all his fault; he couldn't be expected to suddenly turn the Falcon into the complex, downbeat hero of Chandler's story. Jenkins does his usual stuff pretty well but I think he knew that he was an add-on to the story and he tried hard to compensate. Gleason is pretty funny in a minor role but the story specific characters are not as well played as they would later be. Bond may well have been a good model for later versions but he is not as good as them. He tries hard and has a good presence but I just found it hard to accept him as the character. The actresses in the roles of Velma and Riordan are all OK, but nothing more than that. Overall this is an OK Falcon film despite the weaknesses. The plot is better than normal but not as well used as the same source would be in other films later on. The Falcon humour and character take away from the core of the story and stop it being the noir it deserves to be, while the mix of material and series formula is not totally successful – not quite oil/water but certainly strange bedfellows. Fans of the Falcon and Chandler completists will seek it out but for most people it will just be an average crime film or a poor version of a story done better elsewhere.

Jane Napolitano (Jane1023) An entertaining enough film, but a bit too "cute" and tries a bit too hard to be funny for hard-core film-noir fans like myself. For a far superior adaptation of the same Chandler story, I highly recommend "Farewell My Lovely" (1975).