Gumshoe

A nice little Maltese Falcon pastiche, with snappy, chandleresque dialogues and Albert Finney doing his best Humphrey Bogart. It's Stephen Frears' first film. The story takes place in Liverpool. Do British directors deliberately try to make British cities look depressing? Or are British cities simply depressing? There's the same gray weather and brick buildings as in Get Carter. And then, on Downton Abbey, the sun is always shining. So the weather in Britain, it's a class thing?