Big Sleep (Blu-ray)

L.A. private eye Philip Marlowe (Humphrey Bogart) takes on a blackmail case and follows a trail peopled with murderers, pornographers, nightclub rogues, the spoiled rich and more. Raymond Chandler's legendary gumshoe solves it in hard-boiled style -- and style is what The Big Sleep is all about. Director Howard Hawks serves up snappy character encounters (particularly those of Bogart and Lauren Bacall), brisk pace and atmosphere galore. This Blu-rayTM doubles your pleasure, offering two versions of this whodunit supreme: the familiar 1946 theatrical version, full of reshot scenes of incendiary Bogart/Bacall chemistry, and the less-familiar 1945 prerelease version, as a special feature, whose plot and resolution are more linear in fashion.