Private detective Phillip Marlowe (Elliott Gould) is incensed over being arrested as an accessory in the death of his friend Terry's (Jim Bouton) wife's murder. He is released when Terry turns up dead in Mexico from an apparent suicide. Marlowe doesn't believe it and begins investigating. Sort of. He takes an unrelated case in the same gated neighborhood when a housewife (Nina van Pallandt) needs help finding her missing husband (Sterling Hayden). He solves that almost immediately and then uses it as an excuse to keep poking around. A local mobster (Mark Rydell) helpfully points him in the right direction by showing up demanding the money Terry supposedly owed him.
There are many Phillip Marlowe stories. This might be the worst one. But a bad Marlowe is like a bad martini. It's still drinkable; you just switch to something else after.
This is the youngest I've ever seen Elliott Gould and the quality of the cinematography is so bad, I'm still not really sure I saw him. Everything seemed very slightly fuzzy in the way of the time. He is certainly in this movie though. Also, the recently deceased Henry Gibson in a small inexplicable role but still welcome. And keep your eyes peeled (though you don't really need to, he sticks out like a sore thumb) for a young Arnold Schwarzenegger near the end.
It's definitely not my favorite noir. Nothing really grabbed me and it felt very paint-by-numbers. And this is just a personal irritation, but the overuse of the title song got super old, super quickly. Was Johnny Mercer getting paid by the minute? Anyway, I had intended to watch this on Criterion but missed it by a couple of days as it left their library at the end of March. You can still see it on Tubi, however.
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