dougdoepke An LA gumshoe is charmed by an old flame into traveling to New Orleans to find out who's blackmailing her. There he enters an expanding web of intrigue. Over the years, I've learned to beware of PI movies featuring celebrity stars. That's because the storyline's probably padded to justify the star's lengthy screen time. After all big bucks and reputations are at stake. I guess my PI preferences are for tight productions where a tight plot is foremost, basically those B-movies from the 40's and 50's.Perhaps he was disinterested in the sloppy script, but Newman underplays throughout. As a result, attention moves from him to the many colorful supporting players. At least that way, he gets the required screen time but without dominating the scenes themselves. The movie's highlight, of course, is the white-knuckle drowning pool. How the heck are the trapped Harper and Mavis (Strickland) going to escape the sealed room as the water surrounding them gets higher and higher and the ceiling closer and closer. Nothing they try seems to work. Like the rest of the film, the predicament's resolution again shows that Harper's no miracle man. Also on the plus side, there's plenty of sexy skin and come-on's for the guys, even including a shirtless Newman for the gals.However, the plot's almost incomprehensible, meandering around in 10 different directions to fill out the 2-hour runtime. Likely that provided parts for the large supporting cast of this A- production. Maybe the many plot threads tie up in the end, but after all the convolutions, who cares. It's then that I appreciated the virtues of those old B-movie screenplays.All in all, the movie's mainly for Newman fans, though it appears he came to dislike the results that would also be the last Harper entry (IMDB).

christopher-underwood Fine interpretation of the Ross Macdonald novel and if the dialogue is not as slick as in the screenplay by William Goldman for the earlier, Harper, that is made up for here by some sharp visuals. Newman seems much more assured here and able to seem to stroll through the proceedings with a smile a wave or indeed a punch. I didn't think much of the supposedly kittenish role of Melanie Griffith and have seen her look and sound a whole lot more convincing. Strangely enough the 'drowning pool' of the title, I barely recall from the book and yet here it takes centre stage and most effectively too. Dogs are pretty nasty but the second in command cop, who is unbearably corrupt and violent in the book, is only a shadow of that character here. A fine 70s movie with great photography, decent soundtrack and a punchy enough story to keep things moving nicely.

Bill Slocum Revisiting the private-detective character he created for "Harper" nine years before gives this Paul Newman vehicle some interest, especially as the man was then at the apex of his stardom. It makes for a sweet showcase for his ineffable charisma, yet lacks in other key departments.This time Lew Harper is in Louisiana's Bayou Country to help an old flame through a potentially messy blackmail case. Before you can say "You're out of your depth" (which someone does to Lew, sure enough), Harper discovers a hornet's nest of intrigue involving big oil money, local corruption, and murder.Newman does look terrific, even more for the "little gray over the ears" that gets pointed out by the old flame, Iris Devereaux (Joanne Woodward). Woodward was of course Newman's real-life wife and frequent acting partner in romantic dramas, though you don't get as much of them together as you - or Harper - might like. She's more the fly in the ointment who somewhat unwillingly presses Harper to dig into the ugly guts of the case, as well as a bit unreliable as she lapses into Southern-matron airs and too much drink."The Drowning Pool" has less attitude and more likability than "Harper" did: One wishes that they worked out the story before the casting. It's a great cast, which in addition to Newman and Woodward include Murray Hamilton as the creepy oil man Jay Hue Kilbourne, Anthony Franciosa as the somewhat honorable lawman Broussard, Richard Jaeckel as Broussard's less honorable deputy Franks, and Melanie Griffith as Iris's rebellious, jailbait daughter Schuyler, all but busting out of her crochet bikini. None are great, but all like Lew have their moments."Don't you think I'm kind of...sexy," Schuyler asks Harper, who's interested but (rightly) wary.Like "Harper," "The Drowning Pool's" chief flaw is a plot with too many spinning plates and not much of a through-line. We get a lot of lumbering exposition, with everyone telling Harper what's what up front through a swampy first half. Harper's still a cut-up, though the jokes furnished by the writers and director Stuart Rosenberg comes off as a bit labored. "Harper" opened with a famous scene of Newman digging a used coffee filter out of the trash for some needed java; this time we open with him struggling with a rental car's safety belt. Couldn't he just get another rental? Nah, that would be too easy, and nothing comes easy for Harper.Except for the story, which sort of happens with him in the role of wry bystander. "It's quite a zoo you got here," he tells Schuyler, indicating the indoor aviary her grandmother keeps but meaning the world around it as well.The movie's big finale involves Newman and an unhappily married woman played by Gail Strickland trying to escape imprisonment in a shuttered sanitarium by filling a room full of water and making for the skylight. It's an involving sequence, for a few minutes, but moves as slowly as the rest of the film before ending somewhat implausibly, if not stupidly like "Harper" did.I liked watching "The Drowning Pool" in parts. Like jc-osms said in his September 2010 review, there's a kind of relaxed "Rockford Files" vibe to the whole thing, with Newman taking cues from his pal Jimbo Garner. If he was doing anything that important in this film, it might make for a better overall experience. Instead, the best you get here is Michael Small's rich Preservation Hall score and some fine-looking location scenics care of John C. Howard. Woodward assays a solid turn in her smaller-than-expected supporting role.It's hard to believe what others say here, that this was one of Newman's own least liked films. Given that this decade also saw him in "Judge Roy Bean," "Macintosh Man," "Quartet," and "When Time Ran Out...," I'd say what you get here is approaching par for the man, who still shows some game. Go into it looking for Newman's charm, you won't be too disappointed. But he could do a lot better, and so can you.

sol1218 (Some Spoilers) With the possible exception of his movie debut as Basil the Sculptor in the bombed out, at the box office, 1954 film "the Silver Chalice" the movie "The Drowning Pool" is one film that the late Paul Newman would most want to forget being in.Follow up to his 1966 hit "Harper" Newman is back as the wisecracking and handsome as a movie star, which in fact he is, cool as a cucumber private eye Lew Harper but in new surroundings. Called from his home base in L.A Harper is hired to go to the Bayou Country by his former lover Iris Devereaux, Joanne Woodward, who's being blackmailed. What exactly Iris is being blackmailed about seemed a bit muddy, like the Southern Louisiana swamps, but according to her it somehow has to do with Iris' just fired chauffeur Pat Reavis, Andy Robinson, who claims-in the blackmail note-that he's got the goods on her! As Harper starts to get some mileage in his investigation he runs into local police Chief Broussard, Anthony Franciosa, who tries to put the cuffs on him at every opportunity. There's also Brossard' second in command the sweaty and high strung Lt. Franks, Richard Jaeckel, who's even more determined to put Harper away then even his neurotic boss, in regards to what's going on in the movie, Chief Broussard!We soon find out that Iris' step-mother Mrs. Olivia Devereaux, Coral Browne, known in these parts as the "Bird Lady" is really the cause to all the problems that both she and her sexy Lolita like 17 year-old daughter Schuyler, Melanie Griffith, are having. It fact it's Schuyler who at first tried to entrap Harper in having sex with her in a local motel which he gentlemanly refused by smacking Schuyler around! We also find out that the very hot to trot Schuyler was, or is still, having a hot and heavy affair with Reavis which may be the reason he's, in revenge for her firing him, blackmailing her mom Iris!The movie "The Drowning Pool" goes on and on with different plot-line thrown into it including Mrs. Olivia Devereaux's land holdings which Oil Barron Kilbourne, Murray Hamilton, whats to get his grubby hands on. It's also Kilbourne who, surprise surprise, the just fired Pat Reavis just happens to be working for. ironically one of the hoods that also works for Kilbourne Candy, Paul Koslo, looks so much like Reavis that for a moment,long after Revis departed from the movie, I though they were one and the same person!****SPOILER**** As you would have expected nothing is what it at first seems to be in a movie like this with the truth in this case being far more believable and logical then what the film tried to make you think it was. The half-a** surprise ending was anything but surprising in that by just observing the body language of the those in the movie it gave itself away within the first ten minutes! Only worth watching because of Paul Newman's super-cool performance as P.I Lew Harper with a really cool sequence towards the end of the movie with Newman, or Lew Harper, and Milbourne's abused wife Marvis, Gail Strickland, almost drowning in and effort to escape from being murdered by Kilbourne and his sidekick Candy in what's to be known as the film's title: "The Drowning Pool".