Hammett (1982)

I love this movie so much

Sadly Over-hyped

Highly Overrated But Still Good

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

Wim Wenders did an excellent job with this movie.The only possible difference with the old classics is that the film is filmed in colour. The sets recreates amazingly the atmosphere of the real film noir. The story and the acting works on the same good level, and special mention to th excellent music score of John Barry.I would like to highlight the fact of the movie also shows the personal life of Hammett: his humble apartment, his neighborhood, his alcohol problems, his girlfriend....which makes the story believable.Not just for film noir lovers, but for people who loves cinema in general.

It is painful to have to admit this, but even Wim Wenders can make a bad movie. I saw this years ago and was terribly disappointed. I just had another look, fooling myself into thinking it must have matured in the can and it would be really good, and that I just remembered it wrong. But alas, it was even worse than I remembered. Frederic Forrest is superb and was perfectly chosen to play the main character, Dash Hammett the detective writer ('The Maltese falcon', 'The Glass Key' and the 'Thin Man' films). Forrest worked again with Wenders 15 years later in another film and he played Hammett a second time in 'Citizen Cohn' (1992). He is a good solid actor and always delivers. The other highlight of this film in terms of acting is the amazing Lydia Lei, who plays a Chinese siren even though she is Japanese. She has that something extra. She will make the hair rise on the back of your neck, and maybe more besides. But the film is a super-flop. Wenders obviously loves old noir movies and thought 'wouldn't it be nice if'. But just as 'man cannot live by bread alone', so a film director 'cannot live by homage alone'. The concept, the story, the script, are all terrible. And the interior lighting is even worse, far too harsh, and the attempts at expressionism with streaked shadows and so forth is a total failure. Above all, everything is too contrived and the characters apart from Hammett himself are pastiche people, which was doubtless intentional in a jocular homage sort of way, but Germans should never try humour, as it is not their forte, and Wenders is best when he is being earnest and serious, or portraying personal angst or hanging out with musicians. Even Wenders's flair for music wobbles here, with some dubious song choices. This was just an 'off day' for Wenders which lasts for 97 minutes, and if you make it that far you pass the endurance test.

Hammett was produced by the sadly, now defunct Zoetrope Studios of Francis Ford Coppola. Hammett is a great movie that will most likely achieve cult status over time, especially with the folks who love the old 30's and 40's type crime and mystery movies. If you are a fan of this genre, you will most certainly notice the scenes which are very similar to scenes from the Maltese Falcon, but that is understandable as Dashiell Hammett penned the novel and Hammett is a who-dunnit which places the writer right in the thick of things as an old friend and mentor returns to San Francisco to seek help from Hammett played by Fredrick Forrest (The Rose). The old friend and P.I., Jimmy Ryan, played by Peter Boyle (Joe) seeks Hammett's help in locating one, Crystal Ling played by Lydia Lei aka Lydia Lei Kayahara. Crystal ran away from a brothel owned by Fong Wei Tau played by Michael Chow. I won't go any further with this as I don't wish to add any spoilers to this review, but I will say that Marilu Henner (Taxi) plays Hammett's neighbor and drinking buddy, Kit Conger/Sue Alabama. While she doesn't have the biggest part in the world, she does a good job with the part she does have and the sweater beret and black shiny coat that she was wearing at the end of the movie, well, made me long for the good old days. Other old time favorites show up here as well. Roy Kinnear plays English Eddie Hagedorn and Elisha Cook Jr.plays the taxi driver Eli. Hammett's nemesis in this movie is Lt. O'Mara played by R.G.Armstrong, while the ever present bad-boy punk is played to perfection by David Patrick Kelly (The Warriors)(Last Man Standing). Sylvia Sidney plays Donaldina Cameron and is only given a small part as is Elmer Kline who plays Doc Fallon. Jack Nance plays Gary Salt. The movie goes back and forth between what our main character has written and what is actually happening, but the two are pretty much the same. Dark and brooding as this film is, it is still worth your time and it is available, at least for now, so grab a your copy while you can as it is worth it to have it in your collection. Too bad that it seems that Lydia Lei only had an 11 year run in movies and TV. I thought she played her character wonderfully. According to the information on IMDb she started in 1977 and her last entry was 1988.

There is nothing more irritating than a high-concept art film. Except, perhaps, a botched one.You need to have a very good reason to make a movie featuring Dashiell Hammett as a 'real detective'. It is a twee and obvious idea. (It was called Murder She Wrote and it ran for years on the telly, where it worked perfectly.) But a serious 'A' feature, with a star director? Presumably the point would be to show the 'real' people on whom Dash Hammett based his fictional characters.But instead, here we see Hammett surrounded by people doing largely uninspired impersonations of characters from old Hammett movies. A decrepit Elijah Cook Jr. drives a cab to the same apartment building he inhabited in 'The Maltese Falcon', where another twitchy gunsel waits with a fake Sydney Greenstreet. The fake sets look like fake sets from the Warner's backlot.Because it's all a copy of a copy, everything seems pallid: Roy Kinnear simply reminds us how depraved and scary Greenstreet originally was. The only way for this film to be viable was to find someone even scarier than Greenstreet: to show us how Hammett 'tidied reality up' in his fiction. Instead, we get a pointless pastiche.What might conceivably have saved this is a performance of blistering charisma in the title role. I suspect Frederic Forest is absolute dynamite in the live theatre; here, he comes across as miscast. (Imagine Sam Spade played by Tom Hanks, and you'll be in the right ballpark). What an odd person to choose to replace Brian Keith. (And wasn't Brian Keith a weird person to choose in the first place?) There's a short tantalising 'dream sequence' at the end as Hammett converts his recent experiences into a completely different plot from the one we have just seen. Wonder if these are clippings from the 'lost version'? Anyway, it's the nicest piece of whimsy in the whole film. Otherwise, it feels flat and style-free, and it simply lacks elan. Fassbinder used to knock out things like this over a weekend; this feels arduous. (God it would be tiresome for all concerned to reshoot a whole movie. Particularly if it's for Yankee bankers who presumably want it all 'dumbed down'...) Wim Wenders. If you've seen 'Burden of Dreams', you'll know he looked a lot like his title character when this was made. Does it mean anything?