On D List of Movie Reviews
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The Drowning Pool (1975)
Rate:
5
Viewed:
1/26
1/26:
Although the plot is less muddled than Harper, The Drowning Pool
is an okay neo-noir picture.
Paul Newman's acting is much improved this time around. In the last picture, he overdid it while making
faces, causing him to be unlikeable. Here, he cuts down his errors and finds the appropriate time to roll his
eyes. Hence, there are some funny moments. Having started out in acting, this is an early screen appearance
for Melanie Griffith who was 17 at the time.
Okay, great...Harper solves the case. So what? That's the problem the entire time; it has to mean something
to me. As the film takes place in Louisiana, including some shots of New Orleans, which is a nice touch,
the thread involving J. Hugh Kilbourne does remind me of Fletch Lives
with Hal Holbrook substituting for Murray Hamilton.
The most memorable scene is when Harper had an idea of getting out of the locked room by turning all the
faucets on, so he and Mavis could float to the ceiling and then escape through the skylight only that
it didn't work as hoped for, hence the film title. If it were up to me, I would've done the same
thing as long as there's no other way out.
In case if you didn't get the beginning, this is according to IMDb: "Harper
gets into an airport rental 1974 Ford Galaxie 500. That was the year Ford and other manufacturers were
required by the federal government to install a seat belt-ignition interlock safety system—which Ford
developed—and Harper struggles to adapt to it. The car would not start without the seat belt being
fastened. This proved so hugely unpopular with the public that the company issued a notice to dealers on
how to disable the system and the government withdrew the requirement early in the 1975 model year."
All in all, if you want to catch a simple Paul Newman flick, The Drowning Pool is an all right choice.