Interesteg What makes it different from others?

GamerTab That was an excellent one.

SnoReptilePlenty Memorable, crazy movie

Brennan Camacho Mostly, the movie is committed to the value of a good time.

MartinHafer When the film begins, Harry Regan comes knocking on the door of retired fellow private eye Ira Wells (Art Carney). Regan's been shot and soon dies. Wells vows to find the man's murderer...even though he's rather old and paunchy. Soon, he meets a SUPER-quirky lady (Lily Tomlin) who whines again and again about her stolen dog and together the pair get pulled into this mystery.Whether you like or hate this film is strongly dependent on what you think of Tomlin's character. Some might find her funny and cute. Others, like me, might find her super-annoying and unfunny. For example, when Wells is at his friend's funeral, this woman (who doesn't even know him at this point) interrupts and goes on and on and on insisting Wells must drop everything to retrieve her stolen dog. Lady...the man's friend was JUST MURDERED and you're whining about a dog?! Her complete lack of social skills and empathy really, really annoyed me--to the point that I really didn't care what happened to her. I just wanted her to go away...and stay! A fatal problem that ruins an otherwise interesting take on Film Noir.By the way, seeing the car explode when Ira shoots the tire of a speeding car was pretty stupid...sloppy and unrealistic.UPDATE: Soon after I wrote this, another IMDb user,'themathexpert', contacted me to tell me it was stolen cat, not a dog. Oops. Sorry about that. Guess I hated the character so much I was not listening to much of what she said.

bkoganbing In The Late Show Art Carney may have created the most broken down action hero ever on the big screen. In fact his role here is in keeping with the Oscar he won playing irascible old codgers in Harry And Tonto and whom he would continue to play for the rest of his big screen career. The man truly reinvented himself after being so identified as Ed Norton of sewer repair on The Honeymooners.Probably at the height of the noir era in film post World War II Carney could have done private eye roles like Humphrey Bogart and Alan Ladd. But now he's retired from the business has a bad leg, wears a hearing aid and rents a room from an indulgent landlady Ruth Nelson.Until his old partner still in the game comes to him with a fatal bullet in his chest. An inside joke if you will because the partner is played by Howard Duff who was Sam Spade for years on radio. And at Duff's funeral he meets quirky former actress Lily Tomlin who was Duff's last client. She hired Duff to find her missing cat.The cat however is key and before the film ends several of the cast wind up dead. It's a well assembled ensemble who support Carney and Tomlin. Joanna Cassidy as the femme fatale, Eugene Roche as a fence, Bill Macy as a bartender/tipster who tries to play both ends, and John Considine are all at the top of their game.But Carney is a wonder, he's got great chemistry with Tomlin and he's got great moves as well. Wish I had some of them.

Rob Astyk As many who have left comments before me have observed, this film echos the detective stories of the 1930s and 1940s. I would go a little further and suggest that the premise of the movie is what would the case be like if Philip Marlowe were roped into a mystery when he was pushing 80? Howard Duff's scene early in the film and even his character's name evoke The Big Sleep while Chandler allusions continue through the film. Art Carney's superbly underplayed Ira Wells is unquestionably an avatar of Marlowe surviving into the late 1970s and into his late 70s. He's a bit deaf, a bit slow, a bit more crotchety but he's still that one moral man walking down "these mean streets" of L.A.Benton has done some extraordinary work, but this is his elevation to the sublime, a movie that one can watch again and again. It's a minor masterpiece. If producer Altman's own The Long Goodbye had been as good a Raymond Chandler film as this is, Goodbye would have risen to the level of the other two incomparable films of Chandler novels: the Howard Hawkes, Bogart and Bacall The Big Sleep and the Robert Mitchum Farewell, My Lovely.

dtidball The Late Show is one of the most underrated films of all time. It's somewhat convoluted detective plot has raised comparisons to Chinatown, which is both unfair and unfortunate. This is a film that stands out on its own.The acting is generally very good, and the performances by the leads are particularly strong. Dialogue which might have seemed forced or corny with less assured actors is believable and often funny here. Art Carney and Lily Tomlin are fun to watch as a bickering detective duo brought together as much by mutual loneliness as by anything the plot throws at them. Both are able to keep their characters interesting without overdoing it. It would have been especially easy for Ms. Tomlin to go over the top with her depiction of the rather flighty Margo, but she manages to balance her character's peculiarities and make it look effortless.Robert Benton received an academy award nomination for his screenplay, but he really deserved more recognition for directing a film in which he gets the mood just right, and trusts his cast to do their jobs well. This was no mean feat for a work that needs to be film noir with some comic timing.I saw this film when it first came out nearly 30 years ago, and then watched it again recently. At a time when so many films rely on computer generated images, and plots that seem dreamed up by marketing departments, it was refreshing to rediscover a film that relies on strong direction, and outstanding acting.