Initial Review

The Long Goodbye - Review

Watched 03 Sep 2026, 4.5 stars

Hard to watch this and not think about how much of it influenced The Big Lebowski (1998) in some fashion or another.

Eliot Gould's Marlowe is okay by me, but the real star is Robert Altman's direction of everything else going on around Marlowe at any given moment. That and the 14 variations of the theme song that play throughout, whether in the movie's universe or on top of it.

When it ended, I was feeling pretty 4 about it, and when I woke up the next day I was feeling 4.5, but I could see it getting bumped up after a rewatch or two.