Gumshoe

Stephen Frears was the ideal choice to direct this quirky little gem. His first film before a prestigious career in television and then in Hollywood shows off his sensitivity, compassion and efficency as a film maker beautifully. Albert Finney gives an astounding performance as our hero, Eddie Ginley, whose life on the surface is far from glamorous. An unemployed Liverpudlian who gets by as a bingo caller and wannabe comic, he is loved by everyone except his repulsive brother William (Frank Finlay) and has recently had to suffer his girlfriend (Billie Whitelaw) leaving him and marrying the sinister William. Eddie however has a boyish love for film noir, the stories of Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe, and the music of Elvis. When he decides to advertise his services as a private detective, he finds himself up to his neck in murder, drug dealing and South African politics! Finney manages both a weathered Scouse accent and a remarkable impression of Bogart incredibly. He is a lovable character, excellently written and played, who could have sustained a whole series of films. Billie Whitelaw is the Lauren Bacall style femme fatale, and the outsanding Janice Rule the seductive villainess. A fine array of British character actors like Bill Dean, Fulton Mackay and George Innes sprinkle the whole film with colour and eccentricity. The in-jokes for fans of Bogart films are spot-on but anyone can enjoy this film, with some superb one liners and very touching moments. But the whole film is stolen fair and square by the soundtrack, courtesy of Andrew Lloyd Webber of all people! From fifties style rockers, to pensive strings to huge, grandiose thirties style epic themes, the score is a delight. The finest moment is suely Eddie's outwitting of the irreplaceable Fulton MacKay on a tube train. Writer Neville Smith (who plays a small role) showed a less humourous approach to a loner's hero worship of his idols in his 1979 tv play Long Distance Information, in which he played the lead character, Christian, an Elvis obsessed DJ who is working on the night of the King's death. Gumshoe is not really a comedy though, but a pastiche, affectionate and observant. It does have it's dark moments though, including a heroin suicide and a couple of moments of violence. And like any good Raymond Chandler, the plot is unbelievably complicated and the least important element!

Eddie Ginley is a Liverpudlian who works as an announcer and caller at the local bingo hall. However he has tired of his current profession and decides to take out a small ad marketing himself as a private eye. Almost immediately Ginley finds work coming his way in the form of a packaging containing £1000, a gun and a photograph of a young woman. Unsure quite what is being asked of him, Ginley tries to get answers but just finds himself getting in over his head very quickly.

An interesting concept is not really that well delivered in this erratic and inconsistent film. The story lifts the genre traditions of the Sam Spade style detective novel and places it down in early 1970's Liverpool. This culture clash offered an interesting film but sadly it is the lack of certainty about what it is trying to achieve that ultimately lets it down. At times it is quite engaging in regards the mystery but then at other times it seems to be not taking it seriously and happy to have it as a canvas for making genre gags. It gets stronger in the final third but up till then it doesn't engage in the way as true detective story of the genre should do. The chance to see Liverpool as it was back in the late sixties/early seventies is welcome but I didn't think that the two cultures were worked into one another that well – it seemed the film was content to leave the juxtaposition as a gag and nothing more.

The cast work surprisingly well with this and they try and play it for what it is the best they can. Finney leads the cast well but is weak when the material is weak; his changing accent bugged me to some degree but playing the case hard saw him becoming more what the genre requires. His support is mostly good because they fit in with the sectioned tone well – really it is Finney that suffers more than anyone else because he has to try and fit in with each scene.

Overall this is more a curio than a good film in its own right. Not till the final third does it decide how it wants to play it for sure and as a result it is mostly uneven and hard to get into. I did enjoy the pace and grit of the final third but I did wonder why it was left so late in the game to pull it all together and get moving.

Obviously, Fans of Film-Noir, Chandler, Hammett, and the Detective Movies of the Forties will Enjoy this Homage More than Casual Movie Goers. Directorial Debut for Stephen Frears, it Features a Fine Fast Talking Performance from Albert Finney as the Titular Character.

Not Really a Detective, He Fancies Himself in the Role as He is Obsessed with Bogart and the Retro Pulp Fiction of a Genre that was Decades Old Even in the Early Seventies. It's a Complicated Yet Simple Plot of a Girl, a Gun, and Money.

The Highlight is Finney's Fondness for Talking Like Bogart and Machine Gunning Dialog that is so Vibrant One can Hardly Keep Up. There is a Breezy Take on All of this that Changes Tones from Comedic Zingers to Strong Violence.

Overall, a Cult Movie that is Highly Recommended for its Target Audience. It's Never Going to Attain Mainstream Status, its Just too Quirky. That's the Charm.

The 70s. You had to be there.

The cheap production standards of the 50s were an attempt to mass produce films the way you would would mass produce shoes. The 60s was an experimental era the same way the children of the 60s were experimenting with everything they could get their hands on.

By the 70s films had become more contemplative. The folks behind this little gem decided it was time somebody wrote a script that captured the very essence of the film noires from the 40s.

Notice I emphasized the script first, because the rest seems almost an afterthought. Make no mistake. Finney is brilliant as the protagonist comic who wants to be a shamus, a gumshoe, but without that magical script there would be no movie.

The script is brilliant. You could turn the picture off and simply listen to the soundtrack and not miss much. ITS THAT GOOD.

One scene in particular where Eddie has to seduce an office girl to get an address seems a riff off Bogey in BIG SLEEP. But with better and faster dialog.

The fact that even the IMDb tag for the film says "comedy" -- WHICH IT WAS NOT -- tells you how lost this gem is in the annals of film.

Whitelaw is great. Janice Rule steals her few scenes.

Recommended.

I recently saw this for the fourth time, the first time having been in the cinema upon its release. This first viewing saw me classifying it as a pastiche along the lines of Woody Allen's "Play it again, Sam" or "The Black Bird" with George Segal. In fact, the script and acting of "Gumshoe" make it infinitely better than either of these two and put it into that rare category of films, which actually get BETTER with each viewing. For a film approaching its fortieth anniversary, obviously much of the background, (such as the physical locations in Liverpool and Billie Whitelaw's being 'locked' into her loveless marriage with Frank Finlay), are now museum pieces/views into the past. Overall, though, the film still comes across as amazingly fresh and entertains from beginning to end. The lightning speed patter and one-liners are razor sharp and the performances by ALL of the lead characters are stunning. The nearest parallel I can find is "The Third Man" and, while it is definitely not in that category overall, I still think this is a very good film indeed which was vastly underestimated when it first came out,(for example by me!), and which only grows in stature and the enjoyment it affords with each renewed viewing.