Review of Philip Marlowe, Private Eye

This self-assured and sinister version of the Marlowe canon was as good as it gets. Keeping closer to the original Raymond Chandler stories than most earlier attempts, it's both entertaining and evocative, romantic and raucous., complex and at times even comic. Powers Boothe is a hulking tough guy as Philip Marlowe...no nonsense at all. And that's how it should be. His rendition of the beautiful and brutal Raymond Chandler prose may not be as smoky and sardonic as, say, that of the sleepily self-confident Robert Mitchum, but it's authentic and natural. This is probably how a real -- and honest -- private eye in the LA of the period must have been -- rock-solid, shrewd, and quick with his fists; skirting around and always aware of the corruption and bent morals of that particular time and place, but never part of it....a sworn Knight of the Round Table. Beautifully rendered, the episodes in this 1983 series have a distinctive, well-polished look to them -- Marlowe moves mostly among the moneyed set (who else could afford his exorbitant $25 a day fee?) and can play suave very nicely...if need be. Needless to say, the women all would make a bishop kick a hole in a stained-glass window...