There’re endless questions to ask about Robert Altman’s 1973 film The Long Goodbye, based on a novel of the same name by Raymond Chandler. Plot twists abound and anything that might be assumed is eventually proven to be suspect right up until the final scenes of the film. That’s not to say Altman created an unruly and incoherent mess, but the serpentine nature of the plot is capacious of raising a few eyebrows along the way.

That being said, the film came about during a time when the film industry was in the middle of an important shift. Easy Rider being released a few years earlier and being heralded both critically and in box office money counting sessions put it to large production companies to match the nature of independent cinema. Even in it’s tone, the biker movie aped an underground cool – one that Elliot Gould’s Phillip Marlowe character dispenses in tossed off terms.

But along with detective stories like The Long Goodbye, the seventies had a propensity for juiced up black protagonists working against the system to better not just themselves, but the surrounding community. Considering Marlowe’s neighbors are scantily clad mystiques that last part doesn’t really apply here, but a disregard for normalcy does. But Gould’s tough guy detective schtick ostensibly makes him the Jewish John Shaft. Maybe Marlowe doesn’t bed as many women – and none of them black – but the indifference towards law enforcement, keeping normal hours and a pervasive ‘I’m gonna do whatever’ attitude makes the case pretty easily. And seriously after all those Woody Allen movies (which are great), it’s good that we got one guy that can take a punch and get back up.

Either way, Marlowe heads out to the store at all hours of the night, not for anything immediately important, but for cat food. There’s no real mention of a proper office during the almost two hour run time – instead viewers are treated to large amounts of time in Marlowe’s large windowed apartment. And while it takes virtually the entire film and a bunch of booze to figure out what’s actually going on, Marlowe eventually takes matters into his own hands when he’s not satisfied with the way in which the police have handled everything.

Hollywood’s given the screen a lot of surprise endings. The Long Goodbye isn’t the most startling, but there’s really no way that any viewer is going to be able to guess at the last two minutes of so of action here. Boss stuff.