It can't have been just coincidence that MGM hired a director called Bogart (Paul) for a story about the character made famous by another Bogart (Humphrey), and actually based it on Raymond Chandler's novel The Little Sister. The result is the most muted Marlowe to appear on the screen. Its weakness is James Garner, miscast as the gumshoe (as was Elliott Gould in The Long Goodbye). By way of compensation there's a tortuous plot, and the first major film appearance of Bruce Lee, later to become King of Kung Fu, as an oriental bad guy who demolishes Marlowe's entire office by use of martial arts, as a grim warning. Lee, in fact, steals the film. It's strange that his potential was ignored for so long.

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