Maude Lebowski: What do you do for recreation?
The Dude: Oh, the usual. Bowl, drive around. The occasional acid flashback.
The Big Lebowski is a comedy movie with film noir aspects. It's directed by Joel Coen, and written by Ethan Coen and Joel Coen, the Coen Brothers. It has a runtime of 117 minutes, is rated R, and was released in 1998.
The Dude is quite out of his time. He looks, talks, and acts as if he was living in the Summer of Love. He's quite lazy, and quite apathetic. But he has just gotten a problem in his life. Some thugs that didn't realize there were two Jefferey Lebowski's in the phone book, broke into his home. They threatened him, and pushed his head down his toilet. Now all of that isn't too bad, but there's the rug. One of the thugs urinated on his rug. The rug that just tied the whole room together. That's a problem, man.
Talking with his bowling buddies, he decides to meet with the Big Lebowski, the Jefferey Lebowski that has money. He intends on getting him to pay for a new rug. But things get stranger, as the Big Lebowski hires The Dude to be the man to deliver ransom money in return for the Big Lebowski's wife. There are mess-ups, and miscommunications, and some things don't just seem to add up in the Dude's mind as he gets deeper into the webs of the rich and strange.
This has to be one of my favorite Coen Brothers film. It goes on my list with Fargo, Raising Arizona, Barton Fink, and Miller's Crossing. The casting is great, the actors are fun to watch, and the dialogue is wonderful as long as you don't mind that the F word is said 267 times(can you believe someone submited this trivia to imdb?). This is a great film to leisurely watch that starts great and ends like a strange noir film.
Main Cast
Jeff Bridges - Jeff 'The Dude' Lebowski
John Goodman - Walter Sobchak
Julianne Moore - Maude Lebowski
Steve Buscemi - Donny
David Huddleston - Mr. Lebowski
Philip Seymour Hoffman - Brandt
Tara Reid - Bunny Lebowski
Philip Moon - Treehorn Thug
Mark Pellegrino - Treehorn Thug
Peter Stormare - Nihilist (Ulee Kunkel)
Flea - Nihilist
Torsten Voges - Nihilist
Jimmie Dale Gilmore - Smokey
Jack Kehler - Dude's Landlord
John Turturro - Jesus Quintana
Sources:
http://www.imdb.com