Cynical Cinema

Alliance Films is releasing a three-disc special edition of Rob Zombie’s remake of the horror classic Hallowe’en on October 7th. While I wasn’t a big fan of the movie the first time around, I know there are a lot of rabid Rob Zombie fanatics out there who may want to check this out. The first two discs are the exact same as the two discs that were released the first time around. The movie, and then the special features disc with deleted scenes, commentary, alternate ending, bloopers, and the featurette “The Many Masks Of Michael Myers”. The third disc is the only thing here that is new, and that is what might make this worthwhile. But only to the most hardcore Rob Zombie fanatic.

You see, the third disc is a four-and-a-half-hour documentary about the making of the movie. It’s fairly interesting, for the first half hour or forty minutes, as Rob Zombie really is an interesting guy with interesting ideas and views. But come on. Four and a half hours? Who, really, would sit through that? Like I said before, only the most rabid, obsessive Rob Zombie fans.

Day of the Dead was yet another zombie movie in George A. Romero’s long and brilliant legacy of zombie movies.  Released in 1985, it was yet another innovative, socially intelligent film from the greatest of the zombie directors.  And if he were dead, the 2006 version of Romero’s Day Of The Dead would make him claw through his coffin lid, rise from his grave, and bite Mena Suvari in the face.  Calling this a remake misses the point entirely.  This Day of the Dead has two things in common with the 1985 version.  Zombies and the title.  That’s it.  The original movie was all about people trapped underground in a bunker as zombies have taken over the earth.  The 2006 version is all about screaming, running, and Mena Suvary being hot.

Once again, these zombies buy in to the new zombie style.  They are fast.  In fact, in an unusual twist for zombies, they seem to be blessed with superhuman abilities.  They can crawl up walls and on ceilings.  But only when it is convenient for a creepy-looking camera shot.  When there are people crawling through the ceiling ducts, and the zombies want to get them and eat them, they resort to velociraptor-in-Jurassic-Park style jumping straight up, apparently forgetting that they can crawl on the ceilings themselves.  There are other problems - Mena Suvari is the least convincing military commander since Jessica Biel in The Kingdom, and Nick Cannon is totally useless.  But more than anything, this movie sucks because it features every cliche in the zombie movie book, without any of the innovation, charm, or social commentary that makes a good zombie movie.

The special effects are decent, the zombies themselves are fairly scary, but overall there is not much point to this movie.  It’s ludicrous in parts, boring in others, and obvious in the rest.  Check out Romero’s Day of the Dead from 1985, if you enjoy the zombie genre.  Don’t check this one out.

The original Prom Night movie, while by no means a classic, was at least profitable. It made 15 million dollars upon it’s 1980 release, and inspired at least a few cult followers. It sucked, but that has never been a huge determining factor when it comes to cult followings. That cult following, however, was enough to spawn three sequels (Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night 2 made about 2 million dollars) and now a bigger budget remake in 2008. That remake comes to DVD today, August 19th, from Alliance Films, and it may even be worse than the original. Which, as I have already said, sucked. The only thing Prom Night of 2008 has in common with Prom Night of 1980 is the title. Well, that and the fact that it’s a horror movie that happens on prom night. The 2008 version, in an absolutely amazing feat for a movie that was this bad, made 43 million dollars at the box office. Here’s the basic plot:

You see, there was once a teacher at this school who became obsessed with one of his students. He murdered her family, and came after her, but was caught and locked up. Now, on Prom Night, he has managed to escape from prison. The cops know exactly where he is going - to the prom, to get Donna (played by Brittany Snow). So the cops go to the hotel where the prom is being held. And they stand around foolishly, sucking at their jobs so much that not only does this killer get into the hotel, but he is able to check in and murder four people before the alarm bell even sounds. Once that alarm bell is sounded, the girl whose life has been traumatized by this predatory stalker is…the ONLY one who doesn’t leave the hotel in single file like everyone else. You see, she forgot her SHAWL upstairs. So she goes back to her room, where of course the killer is waiting.

After a narrow escape, she runs out the door with the killer in hot pursuit, right into a bunch of cops. Who still can’t catch him. With this killer still on the loose, they bundle Donna up into a car, and take her to the only other place in the whole city where the killer would know to look for her - her house. Now, with the young girl hiding out, all alone in her room, at home, the cops continue to sweep the hotel. It’s not just that these cops have never seen a horror movie, it’s just that they are terrible police officers. And Brittany Snow is a terrible victim. She does this thing where she scrunches up her face to cry, and her screams are at best unconvincing.

The biggest problem with Prom Night, however, is that it follows every major slasher-film cliche to the T, except for the most important one. The obvious stuff is there. The cell phones that are out of service. The cop in the car outside the window that is protecting the girl, and then the second look out the window and…his car is empty! But the one horror cliche that could have saved this movie, or at least given it a moderately cool factor, is not observed. That being the cliche where no one knows who the killer is until he is unmasked at the very end! We know from the very beginning WHO the killer is, WHAT his motivation is, WHERE he will strike, WHO he is after, WHEN he will get to her, and HOW he will get to her. Which leaves precious little drama in the process.

All the worst cliches in horror movies, and none of the charming ones, combined with a film in which absolutely nothing interesting happens, makes Prom Night one of the worst films of 2008. Garbage!

Long Day’s Journey Into Night is a new DVD out tomorrow, May 13th, from Alliance Films. It’s not so much a movie as it is a stage play filmed like one. It’s an old 1996 staging of the Eugene O’Neill play from the Stratford Festival, directed by David Wellington and starring William Hutt, Martha Henry, Tom McCumus, Peter Donaldson, and Martha Burns. It’s the tragic and compelling story of an Irish-American family coming apart at the seams. The mother is a morphine addict, the father is a cheapskate and a drunk, one of the brothers is a degenerate alcoholic, and the other has just been diagnosed with consumption. Although this sounds like the basis of a fine and hilarious family comedy, Long Day’s Journey Into Night is anything but funny. It’s moving, it’s dramatic, but it is far from hilarious.

And perhaps it could use a little hilarity. This film is three hours long. And without some break in the drama, it starts to feel fairly monotonous at about the one-hour mark. The performances are all excellent, but they are stage-play excellent, which for film feels a lot like over-acting, in particular the scenes between the brother with consumption and his father. Over a game of cards, the dialogue gets heated, then slows to a lull, then explodes again, then fades away. I imagine that if bipolar disease is something that can be caught, this scene could give it to you. This is a wonderful play, and a great story with some super dialogue, but it seems unnecessary. Why bother putting it on film, when the entire thing happens basically within one room, and there is virtually no action at all. It ends up being three hours of talking. Interesting, intelligent talking, mind you, but still just talking. So to whom does this appeal?

I think, in the end, that this movie was put on DVD for a select few people. The theatre afficionados who can’t get out to Stratford for the big event, and the people who don’t get out to the theatre as often as they would like. So this might well fill the gap. Long Day’s Journey Into Night is one of the best-loved plays of the 20th century, but it does not make for a great movie. One hour of talking could work. Three hours is painful.

Alright Focus on the Family and like-minded Christians, I’m calling you out. You’re getting lazy. You spend so much time fighting against ambiguously gay television characters like Spongebob and Tinky-Winky, that you don’t have time for your own children. And why do you need to complain about these TV characters and movies like The Golden Compass? Because the only thing left to raise your children, what with all that time spent complaining, is the television. And you want to make sure that while being raised by that TV, your young impressionable boys don’t happen across the Teletubbies and all of a sudden start liking showtunes, lusting after Skeet Ulrich, and planning for a career as an interior decorator, or Kevin Fededline’s backup dancer. I know, I know, you COULD just spend time with them, making sure they watched only Christian-approved programming and maybe reading with them, but that seems like a lot of effort, doesn’t it? Better to write angry letters and volunteer at the latest Fred Phelps or anti-abortion rally, leaving your children in the care of (you hope) the VeggieTales.

So then what happens? Your kids are now addicted to cartoons and television. The only way to get through to them now is through other cartoons or possibly video games. And you want the to learn the bible, but they’re not going to be reading on their own or anything. So now, what, NOW what? Well, you hope that biblical stories get made into cartoons, so your kids can watch these cartoons and grow up to be just like you, and join you at the next Pat Robertson seminar. And lo and behold, here comes The Ten Commandments, the story of Moses, in cartoon form! And sure, you could always wait until Easter for the Charlton Heston movie to come on public access television, but then you would have to strap your children down with bungee cords and tape their eyelids open, because there’s no way they’re sitting through that one on their own.

Well, thank God for Christian Slater, Elliott Gould, Alfred Molina and Ben Kingsley, who have all provided their vocal talents to The Ten Commandments, (cartoon version), which came out May 13th courtesy of Alliance Films. This is one of those computer-generated “animated” movies where people kind of look like people, and kind of move like people, but they are mostly bald because animating hair would be that much more difficult. Again - lazy! Just because Yul Brynner was bald in 1956 doesn’t mean all ancient Egyptians were hairless, OK? Lazy, lazy, lazy. With The Ten Commandments, the story is already there. All you have to do is tell it in a cool, new way. But this movie hasn’t even done that. It’s just a cartoon remake, almost scene-for-scene, of Cecil B. DeMille’s 1956 epic! Down to the scene with the staffs and the snakes, and the slave labourers doing their thing, and the parting of the red sea while Moses stands facing it. That one is pretty much shot-for shot the same.

Which means that what we’re doing, in watching this film, is comparing it with Charlton Heston. And it comes up pretty darn short. Cheap, easy animation vs. a cast of thousands, with massive cinematography and epic storytelling? No contest. And Heston vs. Christian Slater? Come ON. Heston had the Moses voice. The deep, booming Moses voice. Christian Slater does not have that voice. In fact, he has a pretty sissy, weenie voice. Can you imagine, in a live action movie, Woody Allen playing Moses? That’s how this movie feels.

“Let my people go!”

“Umm…no.”

“OK, I’ll take my staff and I’ll leave.”

“Yeah, you’d best be going.”

And then there’s Alfred Molina, as Ramses, who calls for Moses like he’s William Shatner in The Wrath Of Khan. “Moooooosseeees!” “Khaaaaaaaaaaaaan!” And Elliott Gould as God may as well be…well…Woody Allen also.

So what it comes down to for me is this - why? Why make this movie at all? I wracked my brain long and hard before coming up with the laziness explanation. And I am fully aware, so don’t bother pointing it out, that the story of Moses and the Ten Commandments is more of a Jewish story than a Christian one. But I don’t see Jewish lobby groups complaining about Patrick Starfish. When I do, I will make fun of them as well. And this might not be the right forum for this, but…isn’t what Moses (and of course God) did to the Egyptian people…terrorism? The plagues - you can’t drink the water, it’s unsafe. The locusts have eaten your crops, so you can’t eat. Your civilians will die if you don’t…let God’s people go. We will kill all of the first born sons of Egypt. Yes. We will murder your innocent citizens if you don’t give us our independence. Umm…sound familiar? Perhaps in Palestine, the people might…OK. I was right, this is not the right forum for this. The Ten Commandments, stupid cartoon version, comes out tomorrow, May 13th, from Alliance Films.

I have read many critics absolutely slamming Death Sentence, the new Kevin Bacon revenge movie. And they are not entirely wrong. Death Sentence is definitely too simplistic. I is definitely filled with cliches. It opens with a montage of Kevin Bacon raising his son from the time he was a young boy, so that we know how much he loves him, and we feel bad when his son gets murdered. There is bad-ass music playing while he shaves his head to go on a killing spree. He does things that don’t really make sense, which lead to crazy action scenes. People conveniently end up near windows, so that they can be shot through said windows in a shower of glass. There are cheesy references to old western movies (Welcome To Hell is written on a clubhouse wall, either ripping off or paying homage to High Plains Drifter). The director was clearly attempting to create a sort of Death Wish - meets - Straw Dogs motif, but was unable to do so convincingly, and the whole movie smacks of effort.

Death Sentence is created from the same book as Death Wish, and in a lot of ways is a remake of the Charles Bronson classic. Kevin Bacon’s son gets killed in a gangland initiation ritual, and he goes all vigilante on the gang members’ asses. James Berardinelli says this: “Death Wish has taken its share of knocks over the years but at least it doesn’t pretend it’s something more important and meaningful than it is - a mistake made by Death Sentence to its detriment.” From Richard Roeper: “It’s terrible and it’s so disappointing because I love Kevin Bacon and I love Aisha [Tyler] and you have good actors here who are trapped.” Some halfhearted praise from Roger Ebert: “There is a courtroom scene of true surprise and suspense, and some other effective moments, but basically this is a movie about a lot of people shooting at each other, and during the parts I liked, the action audience will probably go out to get popcorn, or a tattoo or something.”

But that’s just it. There are actually parts I liked. And performances I liked. John Goodman as a crazy lunatic gun dealer, reminiscent of his roles in Coen Brothers films like The Big Lebowski or O Brother Where Art Thou, and Kevin Bacon, who broods and stews with the best (for a very good movie where Kevin Bacon broods and stews, check out The Woodsman). Although there is that cheesy I-love-my-kid buildup, the scene where his kid actually gets killed is nonetheless powerful. There is a solid courtroom scene that provides some surprises, and the scenes between John Goodman and the gang leader are well done. In the end, I sort of liked this movie. Of course, I will take Death Wish over Death Sentence any day, but that’s just because I enjoy Charles Bronson and his inability to show any emotion whatsoever. Death Sentence is just unfortunate because the action movie afficionados will not enjoy the slow, character-intensive parts (which are quite good), and the people who want to see quality in a movie will be put off by the gratuitous and nonsensical action sequences. There is something for everyone, but not enough for anyone.

When I was a kid, I was convinced that the most dangerous person on Earth was Angela Lansbury. Not because I had seen her crazy-scary performance in The Machurian Candidate, but because everywhere she went, a murder was committed. Usually someone close to her. Don’t go on that cruise, Jessica Fletcher! People will DIE. That role has now been taken up by Jodie Foster in The Brave One. This movie almost definitely has the worst movie title of all time. The Brave One? Who would ever watch something called that? Unless it’s a bunch of kids, and The Brave One is the title of a Nickelodeon after-school special where a young man finally learns to stand up to bullies. But the title here is meant to be slightly ironic, which would be fine if it wasn’t so lousy. Jodie Foster plays a radio DJ who has gone her entire life never finding any trouble, about to get married to her boyfriend, until the couple is mugged and her boyfriend is killed. Then, all of a sudden, she becomes an absolute magnet for trouble. Murders are committed in front of her, tough guys harass and attack her. I guess violence is much like breaking the seal when you drink. Once it happens once, it will happen every six minutes for the rest of your life until you stop.

Of course, with all this fear, she purchases a gun. And when violence finds her now, she is ready to respond with more violence of her own. Which escalates into vigilante justice, Charles Bronson with a pretty face and an awful haircut. She kills muggers, murderers, you name it. Terrence Howard plays a cop who is on the trail of the vigilante killer and who is also sort-of involved with Foster. He is one of those amazing movie cops who can make enormous leaps in logic to come to the exact right conclusion with no help from the other officers or from actual reasoning. He is also one of those amazing movie cops who are completely oblivious of the most obvious things that are right under his nose. Example: He spends the whole movie hanging out with the killer he is pursuing. She says weird things, knows too much about some stuff, seems jumpy at the mention of other stuff. But only when he hears an elevator door bing while he’s talking to her on the phone, and then hours later finds a dead body that’s merely a few thousand yards from some elevators, does he maybe start to clue in. EVERY dead body will be within a few thousand yards of some elevators. It’s a CITY.

The end makes no sense. I know real police work is not like CSI, but I know enough about powder burns and gunshot residue and the analysis of ballistics to know that the scenario that plays out would never work in a million years. Nor should it. The ethical dilemma faced by Howard at the end is akin to the one at the end of the Charles Bronson classic Death Wish. And, basically this is the same movie. But it tries so hard to be something more, and sadly this ruins Jodie Foster. Jodie Foster is one of the top five actresses in the world in terms of talent, and yet, shockingly, she is the worst part of this movie! She looks so sketchy and freaky that anyone would immediately think “killer” when looking at her, the emotions she is called upon to produce never once ring true, and her connection with Howard feels so forced and unnatural that we really don’t care about either of them in the end. This movie really wants to have a message, and deliver that message they have. Here it is: “Don’t rent me”.

The Invasion is a remake, yet again, of the 1950s classic sci-fi horror film Invasion of the Bodysnatchers, a film that has been done many times, in many different ways, including an excellent 1978 remake featuring Donald Sutherland. The basic premise here is that aliens are invading Earth, and doing so by taking over the bodies of humans. In this way, no one can tell that the aliens are here - they still look like the same people. But their loved ones and people close to these people begin to notice. Those people are somehow different. You see, they seem to have lost all capacity for emotion. And it’s easy to spot emotionless people when you are close to them. This leads to some creepy scenes without the need to have some kind of high-tech computer generated monster spitting venom at the screen, or an actor of Anthony Hopkins’ calibre talking about fava beans and Chianti. All you really need to be creeped out is real people who can register no emotion and convey an icy demeanor.

Enter Nicole Kidman. No one does icy demeanor and cold-fish emotionlessness better than Nicole Kidman. She looks like a china doll, as though her features have been carved out of some kind of fine china, and might shatter if she smiles or frowns. And that’s when she’s being interviewed. One big problem with the 2007 edition of The Invasion is that Kidman does not play the leader of the emotionless drones who take over the world. That is a role that would suit her immensely. Yet she plays the emotional centre of the movie, for some reason. The only scenes where she is truly convincing are the ones where she must blend in with the invaders by acting emotionless. Another big problem with The Invasion is that there is nothing terribly interesting about it. Daniel Craig plays Kidman’s best friend, with some romantic tension, but nothing really develops there. Kidman’s son is the catalyst for the proceedings, as he has been taken by his father, and Kidman must get him back before hiding out in the safe zone away from the steel-faced mobs. Her ex-husband, the child’s father, fills the role of the big villain in the film, as he is perhaps the First Person Infected, and therefore the Most Evil.

During the shooting of this movie, there was a well-publicized accident during a car chase scene. A car (with Kidman inside) slammed into a wall with six or seven stunt men hanging onto it. The headlines in the papers - Nicole Kidman survives scare! The details in the reports were that Kidman had suffered only minor scrapes and bruises. Ummm…what about the stuntmen? They must have been completely smashed up, right? They were hanging onto the car, it crashed into a wall…no mention of them. I tried to do some research on this to include here in the review. Other than the fact that two stunt men had to be hospitalized, there was no information about them at all. I assume broken bones, smashed ribcages, horrible injuries. But who knows? And this is in a way another problem with the movie. Only Nicole Kidman matters. Daniel Craig exists mainly as her driver. Jeremy Northam exists only to put a bad-guy face on the “invaders”, and Jeffrey Wright has a part that could be fairly interesting, but takes up only about three minutes of screen time.

Wright is a scientist and doctor who can solve the problem of the epidemic. The key to stopping that epidemic is finding Kidman’s son, who seems to be immune to the infection. I guess they will just mulch him up, synthesize his remains, and create an antidote that will be administered to the emotionless masses by means of an army of crop dusters. Who knows. The climactic scene is nerve-wracking for a moment, but loses all the momentum it has right at the end, leading to something of an anti-climax. The one thing I will say about the movie is that it is a bit of a throwback to those classic horror sci-fi films of the 50s, (like the original Bodysnatchers) and attempts to make a social commentary at the conclusion of the film. It comes off as a bit heavy-handed, since early in the movie there is a Russian diplomat inserted into the story for the express purpose of making that social commentary. Was there anyone who didn’t think his words would come back to seem prescient? No. By the way, during that scene, Kidman is praised for her intelligence in shooting down the theories of this diplomat, but she does so by making statements that have nothing to do with his. It’s like someone says to you “I think abortion is the murder of babies”. And you say “I once burped a baby, and he was grateful”. And then people say “what a brilliant way to win that argument!” What?

As far as modern horror or sci-fi movies go, The Invasion is in the middle of the pack. Far below The Descent and The Host and 28 Days Later, far above Resident Evil and Stay Alive and The Village and Lady in the Water. But all that means is that sci-fi fanatics might find it worthwhile just because they will watch anything in that genre. Really, this movie is made for rabid fans of Nicole Kidman, who want to watch her run around, pretend to talk smart, and get into her underwear several times. That’s the target audience, that’s who should watch this film.

If you are going to make a movie starring just one actor, you could do worse than Will Smith. I Am Legend is a movie concept that isn’t exactly new, it’s basically a remake of the old Charlton Heston post-apocalyptic film, The Omega Man. The film opens with a cameo from Emma Thompson, who plays a scientist on TV announcing a cure for cancer. I suppose we are to believe that whatever that cure was is the same thing that unleashed the virus that wiped out humanity. The next thing we know, it’s three years later and Will Smith is the only man left alive, and he tears around New York City in sports cars shooting at deer, who apparently now live right in the city with the humans. He is accompanied by his faithful dog, Sam, and he lives a fairly quiet life. He has set up mannequins in the local video store to appear as though there are people around, and he rents movies there every night. He has to make sure he is home by sundown, and then he sits there with his dog watching the films.

The reason, it becomes clear soon enough, that he has to be home by sundown each evening, is that not everyone has died. There are strange, mutated human beings living in the darkness. Like vampires, they die in the sunlight, and therefore the daylight hours are perfectly safe for Smith and the dog Sam. Like the volleyball in Castaway, Sam becomes a very human character in the film, like a child who can’t speak. He helps Smith with his work - which is, basically, finding a cure for the virus. Because he is immune to it himself, he uses his blood to try to cure the infected mutants, which he captures by means of snares and traps, the kind one might lay for rabbits as a third-grade boy scout. He then takes them back to his underground lab and injects them with…something…that might cure them. All very experimental, all very high-tech.

But of course, something has to go wrong. And I don’t want to divulge the end of the movie, so I won’t say exactly what it is that goes wrong. But I will say it involves mutants, since that seems obvious, and it involves Will Smith, since that too is obvious. He behaves, toward the end of the film, exactly the way I expect I would behave were I utterly alone save for a dog for three long years. There are some good action scenes, and the mutants are suitably scary. They do seem old-hat by now, however. We have seen many similar scary mutants in movies like Blade II, The Descent, 28 Days Later, and so forth. But they work, and they serve their purpose, so I really can’t complain.

There are some problems with the plot. How come his house still has electricity so many years after the world disappeared? How do his various cars seem to have an endless supply of gas? How come he has those massive steel doors protecting every possible entry into his house, yet the mutants can so easily break in at the appropriate moments? How do the mutants remember where he lives when the time comes? And how can he have the lights on in his house at night if he is afraid those mutants may discover where he lives? Furthermore, if his lab is in the basement of his house, how can daylight get down there to protect people from the mutants when the need arises? And most of those deer-in-the-city shots are very obviously (and therefore poorly) computer-generated.

All problematic, but in the end, irrelevant. As I said before, a movie with (basically) just one actor needs someone like Will Smith, who can make his way through scenes completely solo and still keep our attention. We enjoy this movie because we enjoy Will Smith, plain and simple. And despite the fact I have seen it many times before, despite the problems involved, I did indeed enjoy this movie.

Michael Caine is an all-time legend in the acting world. Lately, however, that is not really a reason to see one of his movies, as he has shown absolutely no discretion when it comes to choosing his roles. He has been in some great pictures (Batman Begins, Children of Men), but that seems to be more as a result of him never saying no to a film role than as a result of any kind of discretion when choosing those roles. As is evidenced by some other films of his - Miss Congeniality, Get Carter. And Jude Law is no better a barometer for the quality of a film. Road To Perdition and The Aviator were great, All The King’s Men not so much. One of the few young actors who has been working as hard as Michael Caine. So their names on the marquee were not likely to draw many people in to watch Sleuth. The only thing that one can count on when it comes to these two actors is the quality of their own performance in a movie. And by and large, they are both terrific almost all the time.

And considering they are pretty much the only two actors in Sleuth, that should make this movie that much better, shouldn’t it? Not only that, but it is directed by Kenneth Brannagh, and he is one of the best directors of literary films of our time. You can tell that this film is Brannagh’s work because he is so very Shakespearean when he does any movie. Sleuth is divided, just like a good play, into three very distinct acts. The first act involves Caine and Law having a conversation-confrontation in Caine’s house. Caine’s wife has left him, and Law is the younger man with whom she is now shacking up. This scene opens with a series of truly strange camera shots, which make the movie feel artistic while simultaneously irritating me. Mercifully they end quickly, and the scene proceeds with some very witty and entertaining dialogue delivered wonderfully by Caine and Law. It ends with a bizarre confrontation and a very strange but compelling break-and-enter-and-murder scene. Close curtain.

Act II: A cop shows up to investigate the murder. Another one-on-one interrogation scene takes place, where Caine is put on the spot by a tough-talking, hard-drinking Scotland Yard cop, and while the dialogue does not sparkle nearly as much as it did in the first scene, this one ends in an almost equally intense way. I think most people could guess the giant revelation at the end of this scene, but since I am not absolutely certain of this, I will not reveal it here. This scene, as did the one before, makes extensive use of Caines monstrous rich-guy mansion, with all it’s hidden safes and elevators and lighting remote controls and buttons and gadgets and gizmos. It is the prototypical rich-guy ostentatious house-that-wipes-his-ass-for-him. The fact that the cop knows where all the buttons in the house are tells us all we need to know, which is why the big revelation at the end of the scene is not so surprising.

Act III: The wheels come off, and this third scene appears to have been tacked on at the end of a movie that had no idea how to end itself. The film plunges out of the realm of entertaining cleverness into the abyss of disjointed narrative and unnatrual actions. Midway through this scene, we stop caring about either character involved, and we hope the movie ends quickly. Mercifully, it does.

I give this movie six out of ten, because I rank every movie out of nine and this one was two-thirds good. (To get a ten, a movie has to cross the line between fantastic movie and all-time classic.) I have always said that if you have say, several verses to a song, and one of them is clearly weaker than the others, bury it in the middle. Don’t open with the weak verse, and certainly don’t close with it. This movie had used up all it’s creativity and intelligence by the one-hour mark. Michael Caine starred in the original, 1970 movie, with Lawrence Olivier. Caine is decent at capturing the character Olivier played in the original. However, Jude Law is nowhere near becoming the next Michael Caine. The best character in the movie, in fact, ends up being the house. And that’s not a good thing.