"Gumshoe" is a nice film for Albert Finney to show his talent for wit and humor. The movie came fairly early in his film career – at age 35 he had 14 total film and TV movie roles behind him. This is a very snappy film, with lots of quick lines and retorts. In the theater, I would have missed some of this. But on DVD, I can use subtitles and/or stop and playback for parts that I missed. Finney shows his talents for imitation and impersonation as well. His "Boggie-esque" quips are quite funny. Some reviewers dubbed this film an "oddity" or a "curiosity." I'm not sure what that means. If it's because comedy is mixed with crime – well we have plenty of that dating back to the 1930s. The series of "Thin Man" movies with William Power and Myrna Loy helped make the comedy-crime mix very popular. Others have commented on the plot and cast. I will add only that this film is spot on for intrigue, and it has some very good twists. A casual viewer could miss a lot of what's going on. The roles are all quite good. Finney's Eddie Ginley is a very likable chap. Finney is one of those very talented people in the entertainment field who have played some great roles, but who have not struck gold spelled with an "O."

The film was great fun, but what really stood out were the topical references. I am surprised no-one seems to have mentioned that when Ginley goes to the hotel room, the fat man in the chair smoking a cigar is a direct crib from the intro to "Alfred Hitchcock Presents".The arms shipments were going to Rhodesia via Dar es Salaam and Beira -remember the Beira patrol to stop them? Ginley going into the office and saying he was from the Board of Trade (who knows what it's called now? The double drainer sink unit in the kitchen - you can't get those for love nor money these days.The Red Star parcel service - that actually worked! Ginley's friend in the cafe with a Dinky Toy Austin Champ and a 25 pounder field gun tractor - they'd be worth a fortune today.The Liverpool Docks, most of which have now been redeveloped.And all the real old cars from the big Daimler to the Ford Cortina. And you wouldn't get a sports car like Billie Whitelaw's for £2,400 today.

Albert Finney is wonderful playing a nightclub comic in Liverpool, a fan of hard-boiled detective stories, who places an advertisement in the paper looking for work as a private eye; he is immediately handed a case involving a fat man, a college student, drugs, and gun-running. Directorial debut from Stephen Frears is consciously not a spoof or satire of American noirs, but rather an homage: an original detective story all its own (albeit one with an unfulfilled plot and supporting characters). Screenwriter Neville Smith's wisecracks work far better than the mystery Finney finds himself enmeshed in, and the pieces which do fall into place seem to happen off-screen. A nonchalant running joke with Finney talking in fast, curt one-liners--and everyone else responding to him in kind--is the film's most charming achievement. If only the story were not so convoluted (and yet wrapped up so unceremoniously), this might have been a minor gem. **1/2 from ****

"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!