Stylish, hallucinating ride!

Rating: 10/10 (27 January 2006)

It's difficult to describe a Coen brothers movie, because the thing that makes the distinct is the flavor, the atmosphere(like a stylish fairytale) and the characters, which are very atypical to movies in general, because they cannot be described as heroes, and also the original point of view and the use of music. This is the case of this tale of a bum bowler on drugs, Lebowski(Jeff Bridges), his two friends, an idiot (Steve Buscemi) and a troubled veteran (John Goodmann), who is confused for a millionaire and gets his rug pi**ed on by a gang of self proclaimed nihilists(Peter Stormare,Flea).
A hallucinating story unfolds, with occasional musical black-outs(fantastic vision, "What condition my condition is in") as he, aided by his idiot friends, tries to recover the rug from the millionaire, who in turn offers him a job, to find his young and slutty wife, a porn actress, allegedly kidnapped by the nihilists. As usual for Coen brother movies, acting is top notch. Along the way Lebowski meets the most interesting characters, the pederast bowler Jesus (brilliantly played by John Turturro), the porn movie producer (Ben Gazarra), the painter daughter of the millionaire Lebowski (Julianne Moore), and her crazy friend (David Thewlis), or the Stranger(Sam Elliott).
The Coens have made some great movies in the past (Raising Arizona, Barton Fink, Fargo- to name but a few), but clearly they refined their craft to an art form with this one.