Watching the Detectives: Paul Newman is Harper
One thing I need to make clear from the start - I’m a big fan of Ross Macdonald’s Lew Archer novels, for me they’re the best hardboiled detective stories written in the “golden age” for such tales - the ‘40s and ‘50s. This adaptation of the first Lew Archer novel isn’t a bad film; it just doesn’t come close to capturing the spirit of the book it’s based on.
Hired by a wealthy woman (Lauren Bacall) to find her missing husband, Harper (Paul Newman) finds that the missing spouse has been kidnapped. With even the man’s wife and daughter not eager to see him returned, Harper has a wealth of suspects but he still manages to uncover an illegal-alien smuggling ring on the side.
It’s hard to say exactly what lets Harper down. It’s got an excellent cast. Newman, in the middle of the decade that would produce some of his finest films (The Hustler, Hud, Cool Hand Luke, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid) would seem a perfect choice for Harper and yet he comes across as far too light and breezy. You get the feeling he’s enjoying himself and that doesn’t gibe with the character he’s playing. There’s a world-weariness about Harper that Newman fails to catch, or he did at the time, he was far more Harperesque in Twilight some thirty years later.
