Hammett (1982) on Netflix
San Francisco, 1928. Dashiell Hammett, a former Pinkerton detective who now writes pulp fiction and drinks too much, is asked by his old friend Jimmy Ryan to find Crystal Ling in Chinatown.
- Netflix3.5/5
- IMDb6.4/104,052 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes77%
Trailer
Plot summary
In 1928, Dashiell Hammett lives in San Francisco, where he writes pulp fiction and drinks heavily. He was once a Pinkerton detective, and his neighbor Kit Conger and other acquaintances call him Sam. An old friend and mentor from those Pinkerton days, Jimmy Ryan, comes to him with a request. Ryan wants Hammett to track down Crystal Ling, a Chinese prostitute, in Chinatown, a district Hammett knows better than Ryan does. Hammett had hoped to put his Pinkerton days behind him and make his name as a writer.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Hammett (1982)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Francis Ford Coppola hired the German director Wim Wenders to make Hammett as his American debut, but Coppola and the financing studio Orion were so dissatisfied with the original version that nearly the entire film was reshot.
- Wenders said the reshoot was done 'entirely in one sound stage', unlike his original shoot, which was entirely on location in real San Francisco places; only ten shots from his original shoot survived, maybe 5 percent of the film.
- In a 2015 interview Wenders said he directed the reshoot himself, recalling that there wasn't much money left and he was too stubborn to drop it, and that 'Francis [Ford Coppola] was too stubborn to fire me so we stuck it out.'
- When Wenders later wanted to finish and release his director's cut as 'an interesting case study', he found the material had been destroyed: 'They only kept a cut negative, everything else is junked.'
- Peter Boyle took over the role of Jimmy Ryan from Brian Keith, who left allegedly because the lengthy production conflicted with other commitments; Keith can still be seen in some long shots in the film.
