The other day I was in my local used bookstore and I picked up a copy of Lawrence Block’s 8 Million Days to Die. I don’t remember why I did. I’d never read a book from Block before. I read a lot of detective fiction so probably I’d just heard his name mentioned as a good writer of that genre. Anyway, I bought the book and read it. I liked it quite a lot.

It is the fifth book in Block’s series about Matthew Scudder an ex-cop, sort-of private eye. At no point did I feel I was missing anything having not read the previous four books in the series, but I liked it enough to know I wanted to start at the beginning. I still have been unable to find that first book in the series at the used store. Maybe I’ll have to buy it new.

Fast forward a few months and I got a review copy of a book entitled Into the Night by Cornell Woolrich. The manuscript of which was found unfinished in Woolirch’s desk when he died many years ago. Lawrence Block was tasked to finish it. I read it and reviewed it (which you’ll be able to read soon over at Cinema Sentries) and quite liked it.

Lawrence Block must have been on my brain because when I came across this adaptation of 8 Million Ways to Die I got all sorts of excited and watched it immediately. It is good enough that I wish they’d made half a dozen sequels and turned it into a television show.

It has been too long since I read the story to know how faithfully they adapted it to the screen. They definitely moved it from New York to Los Angeles, and I’m sure a lot of the details were changed, I don’t remember that ending at all, but the basics are there.

Jeff Bridges plays Matthew Scudder. He begins the film as a detective working for the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department. When a raid goes horribly wrong, ending with Scudder shooting a small-time drug dealer in front of his wife and kids, Scudder finds himself without a job and in a drunk ward. Cop politics handled the first, a several-day bender got him into the second.

At an AA meeting, someone hands him a note to be at a private gambling club at a certain time. There he meets Chance (Randy Brooks) the owner of the club, a high-class call girl named Sarah (Rosanne Arquette), and Angel Maldonado (Andy Garcia) a drug-dealing gangster. All three will become the major characters in our story.

But he also meets Sunny (Alexandra Paul) another call girl, the one who initially invited him to the party. She plays coy at first but eventually offers him $5,000 to ask Chance, who she says is her pimp, to let her leave town and leave the business for good.

Chance says he’s not her pimp, doesn’t have a hold on her at all, and has no problem with her leaving. By the next day she’s been brutally murdered.

Scudder isn’t the kind of guy – ex-cop or not, struggling alcoholic or not – to let that sort of thing go and so he’s on the case.

The script was originally co-written by Oliver Stone and R. Lance Hill with some rewrites added by Robert Towne. Director Hal Ashby was reportedly so drunk and stoned while filming that he was fired during post-production. A new editor was brought in who cut it to pieces and added some dialogue in post.

As such the film has a disjointed, shambolic feel to it. Ashby’s films often feel a little disheveled but this is even more so. There are abrupt cuts and references to things that never happened on screen (but clearly were intended to, and were probably cut).

It is also dingy and dirty, a modern film noir that isn’t afraid of the muck. Jeff Bridges is terrific as Scudder. He gets the look and feel of an alcoholic just exactly right. His performance is full of wonderful little details that make his character feel lived in. There’s definitely a touch of Jeff “The Dude” Lebowski in it, but more than that, too.

Rosanna Arquette is good as well, though her role doesn’t give her much to do. But really, this is Andy Garcia’s show. He’s terrific. Manic, and edgy. Charming, but always on the edge of violence.

It ends in a fury of shouting and violence that didn’t quite work for me. The whole film is a bit of a mess, to be honest, but also it’s kind of wonderful. I enjoyed living in this world for an hour and a half. I wish I could go back and make it a huge box office hit so we’d have more of these films with Jeff Bridges as Matthew Scudder.