since their film debut in 1984 with the tightly wrought texas thriller " blood simple , " joel and ethan coen have been one of the most eclectic , original , and downright fascinating creative teams in modern hollywood .
their films are highly stylized , deeply embedded in a particular time and place , and their characters are more often than not everyday people who get caught up in highly unusual circumstances .
in " the big lebowski , " their first cinematic offering since the multiple academy award - winning " fargo , " the action takes place in los angeles during the gulf war , and the hero of the story is jeff lebowski , aka the dude .
the dude is played by jeff bridges --
one of hollywood 's most underrated actors -- in the best stoned performance since sean penn stumbled through the halls of ridgemont high .
the dude is a simple man who has never quite made it out of the sixties .
he has shaggy , shoulder - length hair , a grizzled goatee badly in need of a trim , and he wears mostly stained tee - shirts , long shorts , and gellies without socks .
he smokes a lot of pot , drinks a lot of white russians , and is more than content to spend the majority of his time bowling with his two buddies , a slightly psychotic vietnam vet named walter sobchak ( john goodman ) and donny ( steve buscemi ) , one of those guys who always wants to be part of the conversation , but never quite makes it in .
one day , the dude is confused with another jeff lebowski ( david huddleston ) , this one being a millionaire philanthropist whose trophy wife , bunny ( tara reid ) , owes a lot of people a lot of money .
the main plot and all its accompanying side - plots and coenesque diatribes are far too complicated to get into here .
suffice to say that the dude becomes deeply involved with the big lebowski when bunny is kidnaped and the dude is asked to be a courier for the ransom money .
by the time all is said and done , walter has become deeply involved , as has the big lebowski 's daughter , maude ( julianne moore ) , a feminist performance artist , a pornographer named jackie treehorn ( ben gazzara ) , and a group of german nihilists led by peter stormare , who was so great as the silent but deadly kidnaper in " fargo .
" " the big lebowski " plays like an amalgam of all the coen brothers ' earlier efforts .
it shares their previous films ' strong sense of time and place , as well as their send - ups of movie genres and political and cultural ideologies .
" lebowski " has the same kind of crazed caricatures that made " raising arizona " such a hoot ; it has surrealistic dream sequences
( one of which involves a busby berkley - like dance number ) that characterized the ending of " barton fink " ; and it has the same kind of cartoonish look and feel that pervaded " the hudsucker proxy .
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the film was shot by veteran cinematographer roger deakins , who has worked with the coens on three other films ,
" barton fink , " " the hudsucker proxy , " and " fargo .
" deakins always gives the coens ' films a distinctive visual style , and here he does a brilliant job of capturing the bright colors of seedy los angeles in the early nineties , whether that by the obnoxious blue bowling suit worn by the dude 's main competitor jesus quintana ( john turturro ) , or the strikingly manic dream sequences , one of which involves the dizzy spectacle of watching a strike from a bowling ball 's point of view .
if " fargo " was the coen brothers ' most restrained effort in years , " the big lebowski " marks their return to over - the - edge filmmaking .
it is overflowing with style and attitude , which helps make up for the scattered plot fragments that never quite come together in the end .
the coens fill the screen with lighting , set design , music , and hilarious performances from all the leads , especially bridges and the always reliable john goodman , who shows real comic timing in his untimely ' nam - inspired outbursts and his intense dedication to his adopted judaism .
with joel directing , ethan producing , and both writing , the coen brothers seem limitless in their capacity to turn our world inside out .
their talent lies not in their ability to reflect the norms of reality , but in their potential to dig out the darkest corners of life and bring them to light .
the coens rejoice in the oddballs of the world , and they put them center - stage to show that it 's not just guys like the dude who are nuts , but the entire planet .
Output: P