The Coen brothers’ eighth feature opens with a lone tumbleweed trundling over desolate scrubland, and then up and over into the smoggy sprawl of Los Angeles.
Cut to a late-night supermarket, where an ageing, instantly likeable shambles-in-sandals carefully examines the milk cartons for coldness and expiry date, sniffs one, and finally, with a milky moustache, writes out a cheque for 69 cents, Ralph’s Shopper’s Club card to one side.
This is Jeff ‘The Dude’ Lebowski (Jeff Bridges) – an easy-going man whose life in LA is ultra laid back, and his response to most of life’s problems is to go bowling.
The Dude’s existence is peaceful, if a little musty. He takes spliffed-up, candle-lit baths and listens to old bowling league play-offs on his Walkman.
When his cluttered Venice bungalow is broken into by two gangsters who pee on his favourite rug, he finds himself becoming quite angry. When he discovers the crooks think they are chasing ‘The Big Lebowski’ (‘Big’ as in millionaire), whose wife owes them a lot of money, he is furious.
The Dude sets off to demand compensation (or at least rug-cleaning) from the Big Lebowski, only to find himself immersed in a series of events that span a kidnapping scenario, the art world and the porn industry.
Dude’s biggest bowling buddy is Walter Sobchak (John Goodman), a loopy security-store owner and ‘Nam vet who attributes every cause and effect in life to the USA’s involvement ‘over there’. He does it when he’s bowling, and he does it when he says he’s not doing it.
The other bowling buddy, timid ex-surfer Donny (Steve Buscemi), is lucky to be able to speak at all.
It’s a witty slice of LA counterculture – from Julianne Moore’s “Vaginal Artist” Maude Lebowski to Kraftwerk-esque German nihilists and a Hefner-like porn baron – all wrapped up inside an offbeat narrative as shambling as The Dude himself.
Mix in an excellent T Bone Burnett-curated soundtrack, lines of dialogue like “We’ll cut off your Johnson!” and John Turturro as rival bowler Jesus Quintana – a strutting sleazeball Lycra-clad paederast – and The Big Lebowski remains one of the Coen Brothers’ most satisfying comedies.
Jeff “The Dude” Lebowski
Jeff Bridges Walter Sobchak
John Goodman Maude Lebowski
Julianne Moore Donny
Steve Buscemi The Big Lebowski
David Huddleston Brandt
Philip Seymour Hoffman Jesus Quintana
John Turturro Bunny Lebowski
Tara Reid Knox Harrington
David Thewlis The stranger
Sam Elliott Jackie Treehorn
Ben Gazzara Private snoop
Jon Polito Treehorn thug
Philip Moon Treehorn thug
Mark Pellegrino Nihilist
Peter Stormare Nihilist
Flea Nihilist woman
Aimee Mann
This is Jeff ‘The Dude’ Lebowski (Jeff Bridges) – an easy-going man whose life in LA is ultra laid back, and his response to most of life’s problems is to go bowling.
