Hammett's short story "The House on Turk Street" is 23 taut pages in my 1974 paperback of his "Continental Op" stories. It's a terrific tale. It takes place all in the same San Francisco house, in one afternoon, with an uneasy band of robbers, hiding out between robberies with a bag of loot, and the fat private eye who stumbles into them by chance.<br /><br />This movie shifts everything to the East Coast and expands the tale to include cyber-crime, crooked bankers, airplanes to the Bahamas, a road trip to Albany, New York, etc, etc, etc.<br /><br />Why? <br /><br />Not much is gained, and what's lost is all the high-powered charm and intensity of the original story. Instead of a claustrophobic battle of wits (with guns added), we have a flaccid, spread-out tale of people tapping at computers, trying to figure out passwords, and shouting at each other. And yes, Milla Jovovich taking a convenient shower.<br /><br />Samuel L. Jackson's character is a perfect example of "more is less." In the original story, the detective is a pudgy, disheveled, nameless but likable PI. Jackson is a policeman, he plays the cello expertly, he has diabetes (!), and he has racial issues with everyone making wisecracks about him being black.<br /><br />Why load him up with so much baggage? And why does his simply disappear for large chunks of the movie? I'm willing to accept that the original short story might be impossible to film, or might make only a 40-minute movie. But they tried and failed to make it into a full-length movie here.<br /><br />Screen writing is certainly hard, and there's no point hammering these filmmakers for trying and failing. But they sure made some strange and hard-to-explain choices. It's too bad.