The neo-noir movement of the 70s, decided that a ridiculously intricate plot was a necessity. You need a guide book, to keep up with who is doing what to whom. The original noirs were basic.
The Southern caricatures are grating.
Griffith plays the same character from "Night Moves," basically.
I lived in New Orleans not long after this film was made, and the reality was ten times more interesting than this cinematic mish-mash.
"The original noirs were basic"??
Oh yeah? Try explaining the plots to THE BIG SLEEP (1946) and OUT OF THE PAST (1947) some time.
Actually don't bother, because it's impossible. Those are two great movies, but their plots are incomprehensible.
THE DROWNING POOL was based on a highly regarded private eye novel published in 1950 -- around the same time THE BIG SLEEP and OUT OF THE PAST came out. So "POOL" has DNA from that era, and the Ross MacDonald novel it's based on is even more complicated than the film.
You may not care for the movie, and that's perfectly okay, but don't kid yourself that older film noirs were necessarily "basic" in their storytelling.
Some were, and some were not.
Good movie but the ending was flat, anticlimactic & unrewarding. [spoiler]We're to believe he only expected $200 of the $10,000 he was handing over after all he went through ? And then he nonchalantly drives away without even collecting that amount ?[/spoiler] Nonsensical !
shareHe actually took $800 from the $10,000 which was the amount of his expenses according the what he told Iris Devereaux just a couple of scenes earlier
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