Thursday, September 20, 2018

Movie review - "Shamus" (1973) **1/2

As he so often was, Burt Reynolds is better than his material here. He's ideal as a private eye, sleeping on a pool table with a phone handing from a basket, confident but amiable so he doesn't seem like a lech, which his character is.

The script isn't up to the models of Raymond Chandler its aping - some scenes are direct steals of The Big Sleep including meeting a tycoon in a weird climate (here it's cold instead of hot) and where the shamus flirts with a librarian.

Burt gets beaten up a lot but comes through. The support cast isn't up to something like Harper. It's okay. Dyan Cannon is great with Burt and I wish they'd have made more movies together.

Rod Taylor played the same role in a TV movie which was a pilot for a proposed series.

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