The Big Sleep

Title: The Big Sleep
Year: 1946
Director: Howard Hawks
Writers: William Faulkner, Leigh Brackett & Jules Furthman, based on the novel by Raymond Chandler
Starring: Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall
Music: Max Steiner
Distinctions: currently #122 on IMDb's Top 250
Length: 114 minutes
Synopsis: a private detective on a blackmail case runs into some murders
How I saw it: on video (rented from Netflix), yesterday
Subjective Rating: 4/10 (Eh).
Objective Rating: 5/10 (gets points for concept, dialog, special effects/design, acting and music) c. 2.6/4 (Good).

Very disappointing. The plot is nearly incomprehensible, even though I've read the book. There's a scene in the book, just when things get impossibly confusing, where they stop and explain what's going on; that scene was cut from the movie. Besides the trouble with the story, it's not a very entertaining movie. Every now and then there'll be a fun bit of dialog that hints at how good the book is, but that (along with Steiner's excellent score) is about all this has going for it.