This 1966 adaptation of Ross Macdonald's The Moving Target is worth seeing if you like detective stories. But Macdonald fans may, or rather should, find it disappointing.
The plot is adapted in a reasonable way, but the portrayal of Macdonald's detective, Lew Archer, is badly flawed. He's played by Paul Newman, who insisted on renaming the character "Harper." I'm tempted to say Newman was just the wrong choice, period, because he's too good-looking and in general projects the wrong sort of image. But even if I allow that he could have done it well, he didn't. I don't know whether to blame Newman or the scriptwriter, William Goldman, but this Harper/Archer simply has the wrong personality. He's more like an updated Philip Marlowe: brash, full of wisecracks, somewhat flashy. Archer is a somber, in fact melancholy, character, low-key in his dealings with clients and crooks. Newman's Harper wears an annoying ironic smirk much of the time, and, even more annoyingly, is constantly chewing gum.
Compounding the mistake is the decision to introduce H/A's estranged wife and a love scene between them: he appears in the middle of the night, begs her to go to bed with him, then gets up and leaves in the morning while she's fixing him breakfast. This functions only to make Harper a less likeable character. In the books we know that Archer is divorced, though we never learn much about his wife or their marriage–both remain distant but clearly suggested as contributors to Archer's general melancholy.
Still, if you get over that (assuming you know the books and have expectations), it's a pretty good re-working of the '40s private eye genre (not exactly noir, but close) in a 1960s California setting (and a beautiful setting it is, when the natural world is involved). It's full of big-name stars apart from Newman (Janet Leigh, Shelley Winters), most of whom do a good job, and is well produced and photographed. I notice a lot of the reviewers on Amazon consider it a sort of '60s period piece, and that's justifiable. I expect it looked very up-to-the-minute when it was released, the sort of thing that reviews call "stylish." But of course the more stylish it looks today, the more dated it will look tomorrow (until it comes around again as nostalgia).
Oh, and Lauren Bacall is in it, too. Here's the almost-opening scene–just a couple of minutes into the movie, the standard detective-meets-client scene that opens so many mystery stories:
Light On Dark Water 
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