A weird but worthy addition to the LA Noir genre. Imagine a bizarre down market Chinatown with a drug addled Big Lebowski playing detective and you get some idea of the strange world this story inhabits. With his mutton chop sideburns, "Doc" Sportello is the most unlikeliest PI that ever tickled the dark underbelly of the City of Angels. He's a paranoid, pot smoking hippy so dishevelled he makes Columbo look like the epitome of sophisticated style and his wreck of a car look like a sleek Mercedes compared to the junk on wheels Sportello drives around in.
Like the best of Noir films before it, the plot is duly tangled and incoherent but redeemed by its wicked humor and a whole host of weird and memorable characters that pop up unexpectedly in the oddest places. It's a glorious mess of a movie but an absorbing and amusing one nonetheless. I haven't had this much fun at a movie since, well, the Wolf of Wall Street.
I see the Sportello "look" being the next big thing at Halloween costume parties. I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing.
Like the best of Noir films before it, the plot is duly tangled and incoherent but redeemed by its wicked humor and a whole host of weird and memorable characters that pop up unexpectedly in the oddest places. It's a glorious mess of a movie but an absorbing and amusing one nonetheless. I haven't had this much fun at a movie since, well, the Wolf of Wall Street.
I see the Sportello "look" being the next big thing at Halloween costume parties. I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing.
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