I understand how the trailer for The Glass Key tried to pass it off, especially relating it to Hammett’s popular Thin Man series. Ed and Paul certainly had lighter demeanors and more personality. There’s that phrase ringing in my mind that the trailer is the studio’s representation of how they wished the movie to be. By that indication, the studio wanted this film to be an action filled romp through the criminal underbelly. The book does have action in it, in fact, that’s all the book is, physical I mean.
 The schism between Jeff and Nick (Shad in the book) puts me in the mind of a film that came out last year that impressed me very much, and ultimately made my pick for the best film of 2006. Rian Johnson, a first time director decided to take his love for Hammett novels and make a hard boiled detective film in which teenagers were the heroes, the vamps, the villains. Brick, the film in question, is set around a suburban high school and involves a loner protagonist (Think of Ned in blue jeans and no moustache) investigating a criminal drug ring in order to find out what happened to his recently killed ex-girlfriend. Much like in The Glass Key, a large amount of the end plot is devoted to an angry split between the kingpin of the drug ring (Lukas Haas, best known as the Amish kid in Witness) and his thuggish henchman. Johnson states quite passionately that Hammett, along with Miller’s Crossing (which we’ll be watching later) inspired him greatly in this effort.