Stuart Rosenberg's The Drowning Pool, from 1975, is a soggy detective thriller that benefits from a stellar supporting cast. Paul Newman plays private eye Lew Harper, reprising the role from the eponymous 1966 film. This film transposes the Southern California setting of Ross McDonald's novel to Louisiana for no obvious reason or benefit. The plot is a rehash of The Big Sleep with Joanne Woodward and Melanie Griffith in the Lauren Bacall and Martha Vickers' roles, respectively. Colonel Sternwood is replaced by a matriarch, well played by Coral Browne, and the greenhouse is replaced by an aviary. The film is nicely shot by Gordon Willis, but Rosenberg's direction is plodding and flavorless. A good example is the opening sequence, in which Newman disconnects the seat belt alarm on his car. The scene is laborious, merely existing to underline Harper's rebellious bona fides.
Similarly, there is very little suspense in the film. The villainy of certain principals is foreshadowed from the get go and makes the narrative utterly predictable. Murray Hamilton is badly cast as a vulgar oil tycoon and offers just one of the film's poor Southern accents. Andrew Robinson and Helena Kallianiotes, two icons of 70s cinema, have one terrific scene together, but then disappear. Rosenberg and Newman seem to want to use the film to attack corporate greed and perfidy in Nixonian America, but the tale is so slight as to render such themes moot.
The film was a product of Newman's First Artists Productions and has the pluses and minuses of a vanity production. Rosenberg had helmed Cool Hand Luke and was presumably brought in because he got along with the star. Anthony Franciosa is reunited with his cast mates from The Long, Hot Summer. As in that film, a Southern accent is beyond him, but he has a few fine moments of unbridled hysteria towards the end. Richard Jaeckel, so wonderful in Newman's Sometimes a Great Notion, is largely wasted as a thug. The Drowning Pool passes the time as a pleasant enough star vehicle, but is ultimately forgettable.
