After 20 years, the shaggy-dog stoner LA noir that may be the Coens’ comic masterpiece rolls back on to the big screen, as light and insouciant as the tumbleweed from the old west that drifts incongruously up to the city in the opening sequence. In fact, after two decades, the film looks weirdly less shaggy, less dishevelled to me: sleeker, sharper, more integrated and with more menace, more mystery. (I found myself thinking of Thomas Pynchon and of David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive). Sam Elliott’s basso profundo narrator, topping and tailing the action and appearing enigmatically in the middle, creates a fascinating residue of unease. But there are just as many laughs.
Our sub-Chandleresque hero is Jeffrey “the Dude” Lebowski, unforgettably played by Jeff Bridges: a younger or more lightweight actor would have made this character seem merely silly. He is a man whose plot function is so close to that of the classic private eye that he is mistaken for one by another private eye late on in the film.
The Dude is, in fact, a former 60s radical and political activist who casually claims to have written an early and uncompromised draft of the Port Huron Statement, but is now permanently at ease, wearing a dressing gown, sunglasses and athleisure-pyjamas combo with flip-flops indoors and out. He is passionate about just one thing – bowling. The Dude is in a team with a couple of other slackers: belligerent Vietnam veteran Walter Sobchak (John Goodman) and easygoing Donny Kerabatsos (Steve Buscemi), and they are preparing to face off against some hated rivals, led by the arrogant but brilliant bowler and convicted paedophile Jesus Quintana (John Turturro).
For more read the full of article at The Guardian
