Chandler (1971)

Director: Paul Magwood

Writers: Paul Magwood, John Sacret Young

Composer: George Romanis

Starring: Warren Oates, Leslie Caron, Alex Dreier, Mitchell Ryan, Gordon Pinsent, Charles McGraw, Richard Loo, Gloria Grahame, Royal Dano, Walter Burke, Marianne McAndrew, Scatman Crothers, John Mitchum, James Sikking

More info: IMDb

Tagline: Chandler is a private eye. It's a hard way to make a living... and an easy way to die.

Plot: A hardboiled aging private eye is hired to find and protect a missing government witness sought after by the gangsters. The witness is a beautiful French woman and even the cops can't be trusted. The case is tough, but so is Chandler.

My rating: 4/10

Will I watch it again?  No.

I can see why this has such a low IMDb rating...it's boring, very, very boring.  Rumor has it the studio re-edited the film after Magwood made his cut and Magwood said they essentially butchered it.  Now if I could see his cut now I'd give it another chance.  As it is, it's not worth watching.  I'm a big Warren Oates fan and I can't even recommend this for like-minded fans.  He's such a downer in this picture that it's one of many problems the film has.  His character cares so little it's easy to feel the same way.  The movie is shot with soft focus, the score is dreary, the story is slow and plodding and so on.  It took a couple of attempts to get through this and both times I was struggling with sleep...because of the movie not because of outside circumstances.  The ending is bleak but I didn't care by then what happens to who.  Ugh.