Robert Altman directs this radical adaptation of Raymond Chandler's novel. Los Angeles detective Philip Marlowe (Elliott Gould) smells a rat when his friend Terry Lennox (Jim Bouton), whom he has just driven to Tijuana, is accused of murder. Convinced of Lennox's innocence, Marlowe follows a convoluted trail which leads him to his friend's mistress, Eileen Wade (Nina Van Pallandt), her alcoholic husband (Sterling Hayden) and hood Marty Augustine (Mark Rydell), to whom Lennox owed a substantial sum of money. Watch out for an early, unbilled appearance by Arnold Schwarzenegger as one of Augustine's heavies.