MikeMagi Even though he co-wrote the screenplay for "The Big Sleep," William Faulkner reportedly admitted that he never understood the plot. It would have been fun to turn him loose on "Gumshoe" which by comparison makes "The Big Sleep" seem like an exercise in clarity. Albert Finney stars as a bingo caller and aspiring comic who advertises himself as a private eye. Lured to a hotel room, he's handed a parcel containing a thousand pounds, a gun and some photos. Why? He has no idea and neither does the audience. But it does lead to an encounter with a self-styled hit man and a dead body in his bedroom. Why? Again, no one has a clue. Eventually, the mystery centers on a drug-addicted fat man, Finney's obnoxious brother played by Frank Finlayson, shipments of arms to Africa and a weird book store which is managed either by a nymphet or a thug. Throughout the confusion, much to his credit, Finney acts as if it all makes sense. In fact, his performance is thoroughly entertaining. Which "Gumshoe" would be if it was only comprehensible.

nigel-47 This film buzzes with excitement and whips along at a great pace. It's cliché precisely because Eddie Ginley sees everything that way. That's the charm. The script works well, and is a delight if you concentrate (!) All the actors give deeply - the sparring between Finlay and Finney is marvellous. How they kept straight faces is a mystery - they seem to be enjoying it so much. All the locations are raw and stark but never over-done or contrived. What you see is what there was in 1970's Liverpool and London. A thoroughly enjoyable film with a top-class cast.

bob the moo Eddie Ginley is a Liverpudlian who works as an announcer and caller at the local bingo hall. However he has tired of his current profession and decides to take out a small ad marketing himself as a private eye. Almost immediately Ginley finds work coming his way in the form of a packaging containing £1000, a gun and a photograph of a young woman. Unsure quite what is being asked of him, Ginley tries to get answers but just finds himself getting in over his head very quickly.An interesting concept is not really that well delivered in this erratic and inconsistent film. The story lifts the genre traditions of the Sam Spade style detective novel and places it down in early 1970's Liverpool. This culture clash offered an interesting film but sadly it is the lack of certainty about what it is trying to achieve that ultimately lets it down. At times it is quite engaging in regards the mystery but then at other times it seems to be not taking it seriously and happy to have it as a canvas for making genre gags. It gets stronger in the final third but up till then it doesn't engage in the way as true detective story of the genre should do. The chance to see Liverpool as it was back in the late sixties/early seventies is welcome but I didn't think that the two cultures were worked into one another that well – it seemed the film was content to leave the juxtaposition as a gag and nothing more.The cast work surprisingly well with this and they try and play it for what it is the best they can. Finney leads the cast well but is weak when the material is weak; his changing accent bugged me to some degree but playing the case hard saw him becoming more what the genre requires. His support is mostly good because they fit in with the sectioned tone well – really it is Finney that suffers more than anyone else because he has to try and fit in with each scene.Overall this is more a curio than a good film in its own right. Not till the final third does it decide how it wants to play it for sure and as a result it is mostly uneven and hard to get into. I did enjoy the pace and grit of the final third but I did wonder why it was left so late in the game to pull it all together and get moving.

Gideon Freud "Exhilirated" was the way my father felt, as he emerged from the new Scala cinema in Kings Cross, after watching Albert Finney in Gumshoe sometime in the 1970s. He loves the writing of Raymond Chandler and Dashiel Hammett. The idea of a fellow aficionado so caught up in the idea of being Philip Marlowe that he places an advertisement in the local Liverpool paper offering his services in 1972 as though he were the fictional private eye in California of the 1940s and is then caught up in a case he doesn't understand but which he sets out to follow nonetheless as though he was the legendary hero of those mean streets completely captivated him. The fast talking repartee. The refusal to compromise. And the gun. It comes in at the beginning. It is undoubtedly real - in an England where there are no guns. Will Finney who carries it everywhere with him ever get to fire it? Prepare to enjoy a pacey, brilliantly written plot which refreshingly expects the audience to have the knowledge and intelligence to keep up and be swept away. Anyone who knows my father will know that this review was really written by him!