***SPOILERS*** Re-made Raymond Chandler film-noir classic that just doesn't have the drama and suspense of the original Bogart/Bacall 1946 film that in some ways was even more confusing then the less effective 1978 remake. We have in this version of "The Big Sleep" Robert Mitchum as the not so usual down on his luck, barley keeping up with paying the rent for his shabby office, private detective Philip Marlow. Marlow drives around in a $50,000.00 car checking the time on his $5,000.00 Rollex watch and wearing clothes personally tailored and cut to size never getting dirty torn or even creased no matter how many beatings he take throughout the movie!
This time around Philip Marlow is working his trade, as a PI, in the green rolling countryside of the 1970's jolly old England not the dark dirty and gritty streets of 1940's L.A. Coming to see his latest client sick and disabled millionaire General Sternwood, James Stewart, Marlow is told that he's being blackmailed by this local bookstore owner Arthur Geiger, John Justin. Geiger has a number of nude photos of General Sternwood's wacky's younger daughter Camilla, Candy Clark, and is threatening to make them public if the General doesn't pay him 10,000 Pound Sterling.
We, and Philip Marlow, see right away that Camilla is a bit off her rocker but what we don't realize is that General Sternwood is really interested in finding her missing husband Rusty Regan, David Seville, whom he seems to have become very found of in his stories about himself and his exploits as an Irish patriot. Besides Camilla there's also the Generals slightly nymphomaniac older daughter Charlotte, Sara Miles, who like the younger Carmilla is always making a play for the much older, and not at all interested, Philip Marlow that's keeping him from doing his job.
Marlow tries to track down Geiger and finds him in his house, with a naked and goofy Carmilla, shot dead between the eyes. It's later found out that the Sternwood family chauffeur Owen Taylor, Martin Potter, killed Geiger in a fit of anger when he found out that he was photographing his secret lover Carmilla in the nude. It's later that Taylor is himself killed and, together with his car, thrown into the nearby river by an associate of Geiger Joe Brody, Edward Fox. Fox murdered Taylor in order to steal Geiger's film that Taylor had on him but at the same time not knowing that Geiger was already dead.
The story leads into a number of different directions that has to do with a local British mobster Eddie Mars, Oliver Reed, and his club-footed and sadistic hit-man known as the Brown Man Lush Canino, Richard Boone, and members of London's sleazy and dangerous Red Light district that includes some of the late Arthur Geiger's gay lovers. All this shenanigans leaves some half dozen corpses behind in it's wake but the real crux of the story goes right back to the missing son-in-law of General Sternwood Rusty Regan.
Philip Marlow sensed right from the beginning that General Sternwood was only interested in Rusty's disappearance not his daughter, and Rusty's wife, Carmilla being blackmailed. Wanting to know for himself as well as his client, General Sternwood, if Rusty is either alive or dead Marlow begins to realizes that only Carmilla can provide that answer. Being mentally unbalanced may very well be the result of what Carmilla knows about Rusty.
Taking a chance Marlow sets Carmilla up, in a scheme that he secretly devised, in order to find out just what she not only knows about her missing husbands whereabouts but also if she had something to do with his disappearance in the first place. Marlow's scheme entrapping Carmilla and finding out about what happened to Rusty Regan sadly pays off and shocking proves what Philip Marlow suspected about Carmilla all along. Now Marlow has to somehow keep her father General Sternwood from finding it out in order not just to keep from breaking his heart but also from causing him to suffer a fatal heart-attack.
Having solved the case of the missing son-in-law for General Sternwood and not even asking or accepting a tip or bonus for doing it, from a grateful Charlotte, Philip Marlow hops in his expensive car and drives as fast as he can out of Sternwood Manor. Marlow in his speedy exit breaks a number of speed limits on the way out as he tries to get his head back together after what he had to go through in solving the case.
