I saw this over the weekend. It was good but it lacked a lot
of the intensity and desperation that the book had. Bannion
was scarier in the book. In the movie Bannion is going to
choke the information out of the dead cop's wife. In the book
he's considering shooting her and letting the information
surface through her attorney. In the movie he visits his
daughter a couple times and appears halfway human. In the
book I don't recall any scenes between him and his daughter
after his wife is murdered. The scene in the movie where he
backs down the gambler isn't nearly as ominous as the
book.
The movie also ignores some of the deeper waters in the book,
like the religious connotations and symbols, or the
redemption of Bannion's humanity through the thug's
girlfriend and the help he gets from the others. The help is
still there, but you don't sense that this is Bannion's
salvation.
I'm about halfway through Higgins's FRIENDS OF EDDIE COYLE.
I've never seen any hardboiled with this much conversation in
it. Elmore Leonard writes about Higgins's influence on him in
the Introduction. This was discussed earlier.
miker
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