Big Lebowski Film Noir

4 Pages 1003 Words

“All the Dude wants is his rug back.”
When thinking about the “film noir” genre, one’s thoughts usually turn to a private detective in a dark alley smoking a cigarette, wearing a trench coat and a fedora. What about a lazy bum in a bowling alley drinking a white russian and wearing a pair of jelly sandals? Believe it or not, the Coen Brothers film The Big Lebowski falls into the genre of film noir. It takes all of the conventions of the genre and turns them upside down in a hilarious “whodunit.” Jeffery “the Dude” Lebowski gets embroiled in a plot full of deceit, twists, turns and nihilists all in search of a new rug.
The plot of The Big Lebowski has many film noir themes, such as greed and deceit. In the beginning of the movie two thugs break into the Dude’s apartment and tell him that his wife owes money to someone named Jackie Treehorn. They have mistaken the unmarried Dude for another Jeffrey Lebowski who is a millionaire. When they realized this, the thugs urinate on the Dude’s rug. In an attempt to be compensated, the Dude finds the millionaire Lebowski and tells him the story. This Lebowski recruits the Dude to deliver the ransom to the nihilists who supposedly kidnapped his wife. He offers the Dude $20,000 to deliver the one-million dollar ransom to the Nihilists. When the millionaire Lebowski’s daughter, Maude Lebowski discovers that the Dude hasn’t been successful in delivering the ransom, she offers him more money to return the ill-gotten money to her instead of carrying out her estranged father’s wishes. Eventually the Dude comes across Jackie Treehorn; the man to whom Lebowski’s wife owes the money. Treehorn offers Dude 10% of the ransom money to give the money to him instead. In the end the Dude finally discovers that their really isn’t any money in the briefcase and that Lebowski’s wife wasn’t even kidnapped. The Dude was merely tricked into delivering and loosing an ...