Private eye Eddie Ginley (Albert Finney) thinks he’s Bogart – if Bogie was a compere at a Merseyside bingo – but his latest case may have bamboozled even Raymond Chandler himself. Accompanied by a mesmerising Andrew Lloyd Webber score, Frears’ post-modern dismantling of the American detective genre revels in British locations and wonderfully earthy wordplay. You’ll never look at a raincoat in the same way again. Here’s looking at you … Eddie? –Edinburgh International Film Festival
Frears was born in Leicester, England to an Anglican father and a Jewish mother. Attended the Trinity College in Cambridge before starting his carreer in television where he contributed to several high-profile series such as the BBC’s Play for Today. In the mid-1980s he came to prominence as an important director of British and later American films. It was his production of the one-off drama My Beautiful Laundrette for Channel 4 in 1985 that led to his notice as a capable film director when the production was released theatrically to great acclaim. He next directed another successful British film, the Joe Orton biopic Prick Up Your Ears in 1987, followed by a second film from a Hanif Kureshi screen play, Sammy and Rosie Get Laid. The following year he made his Hollywood debut with Dangerous Liaisons. Frears had another critical success with The Grifters, for which he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Director but suffered a major box office disappointment with Hero, starring… read more
