I saw the movie No Good Deed, based on Hammett's Continental
Op story House on Turk Street. Most of the adaptations we
talk about here involve novels being pared down to film
length. However, here was a short story that was padded to
fill the proper amount of time. I say padded instead of
fleshed out because it would have been very obvious what came
from Hammett's story and what was grafted onto it by the
screenwriters even if I hadn't reread the story.
The basic premise is the same, an investigator is knocking on
doors on Turk Street looking for a missing person. Behind one
of those doors is a criminal gang that falsely believes he is
looking for them. They capture the investigator before he
realizes anything is wrong; he spends the bulk of the story
tied to a chair. The femme fatale of the story uses his
presence as a wedge to help her play the various men against
each other for her own gain.
In the movie, Jack Friar (Samuel L Jackson) is a cop (and has
a name), a GTA detective, not a private operative. He is not
investigating a crime, but looking for the lost/runaway
daughter of a neighbor. The story involved the split of bonds
that had already been stolen, but we get to see the caper in
the movie -- a fraudulent bank wire transfer with the help of
an inside man who loves the femme fatale. All of this is
still pretty faithful to the story.
However, things don't work quite so well when they start to
add things and get away from Hammett's core. First, Friar is
diabetic, so his lack of insulin complicates his being taken
captive. The main change is the bonding between him and the
femme fatale, Erin (Milla Jovovich), while she watches him
while the others are at the bank. It turns out that she was a
child musical prodigy in Russia before the economic collapse,
at which point she hooked up with the nasty boss of the
gang,Tyrone
(Stellan Skarsgard). Friar is a frustrated bass violinist who
was on his way to music fantasy camp to play with Yo Yo Ma
when he was asked to find his neighbor's daughter. So there
is a long interlude where the two bond over music, even play
together. Erin is depicted as a very sympathetic character
who wants to let Friar go but whose fear of Tyrone won't let
her.
And then Tyrone and Hoop get back from the bank and we return
to the story and she returns to her role as femme fatale. But
it just doesn't fit now. Acting cold blooded might undercut
the sympathy they have built up for Erin, so they make her
attempted manipulation half-hearted so it fails to satisfy on
either count.
And that's a shame, especially since the screenplay was
co-written by Steve Barancik, who created one of the most
memorable recent movie femmes fatales in Bridget Cross in
Last Seduction. And Milla Jovovich could have done a good job
with a sexy-nasty role -- her acting here is better than I've
ever seen, than I ever expected. The story was Elvira's
(Erin's name in the story), with the Op mostly a bystander.
Unfortunately, she is never a serious contender in the film,
which turns Erin into the trophy of a battle between Tyrone
and Friar for her soul, although she does act just enough to
keep both men thinking she wants them to win.
It's not a bad movie (Samuel L Jackson is particularly good),
possibly worth a rent if you're in the mood for a caper film,
but -- surprise, surprise -- the story's a lot better.
Mark
ps - minor quibble -- after his initial search and his
repeated insistence throughout the movie that he was just on
the street because he was looking for a girl, we never hear
if that girl was found, even though there is a brief coda
after Friar has returned home.
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