Watching this hugely entertaining binge-ripe trash, I was always aware of Scream‘s Randy Meeks’ assertion that “Everybody’s a suspect!”. And they are, with the red herrings and reverse cul-de-sacs. Who can you trust? No one. Who is likeable? A few, but they’re probably dirty.
Cluedo on steroids, it’s very well acted for what is essentially the TV equivalent of a sordid airport page-turner, even if it’s another gruelling example of the ‘Americanisation of conversation’. Example:
Harvey Keitel and Peter O’Toole in the same movie piqued my interest, and it’s all innocent and charming enough, the fairies a countryside escapism from the horrors of late modernity, WWI ruining the illusion for everyone.
It should be far more engrossing but it isn’t and just ends up being awfully British – rudimentary camerawork, score from a Sunday church service, barely competent actors who’ve littered a hundred other mediocre British films.
Why I’m being so harsh on such a nothing movie aimed at kids I don’t know.
A haunting role from Christopher Walken, and just before he became a pop culture icon in addition to actor. You just feel sorry for him in this movie, with the foreboding he is totally doomed, such is the tension and supreme creepiness of the atmosphere. And for a David Cronenberg picture, it’s relatively tame, with none of the visceral gore and unsavoury preoccupation with flesh (mostly rotting) that characterises his earlier work.
The always captivating Herbert Lom shines, and Martin Sheen is a Grade A sleaze.
Seen this four times now. It is impeccable and unexpectedly … devastating. I HOPED (to justify my hatred of the worst of mannered British cinema) this upstairs/downstairs malarkey to be balls but, oh no.
Dr. L, sorry, Anthony Hopkins is an astounding thesp when he can be arsed and this wonderful film displays all of his gifts, how he can inject such a pitiful figure with pathos and something hidden but not quite revealed. What a heartless bastard this bloke is, dedicated to his duty – for folk who don’t give a tuppence about their servants’ well-being or advancement/adventures. He doesn’t know what else to do and it is purgatory witnessing it.
The Emma Thompson big-cheese housekeeper goes all-out to show how much she admires him and he is oblivious – what an infuriating fool of a character, but it’s explained why he is that way. He gets there in the end. Painfully.
Tragedy in the best way. Get the tissues out.
And also, Fred Elliott from Corrie Street (1066-the end of the world as we know it) pops up as a district nurse in a tuxedo.
The opening voice-over reeked of amateurishness – John Lithgow narrating shots of our heroes playing football, describing a wee bit of superfluous info about them all – so I turned it off and watched a documentary about the bomber instead.
I wish this would have just been about the Battle of Waterloo (1815) as it’s the only time this movie truly ignites, and that’s despite the battlefield inaccuracies and the atrocious performance of Rupert Everett as the Duke of Wellington, the ’90s throwback playing Wellesley as a snarling thug rather than aristocratic master of defensive battle.
The first 45 minutes are great, Napoleon awestruck by Joséphine and proceeding to act in the most hilariously childlike manner, a supreme baby smitten. It’s very funny and it’s a shame it didn’t stay this way, a couple’s domestic melodrama taken to the extremes of the world stage. Unfortunately, what follows is a series of scenes from your basic high school history lesson with nothing holding them together. Don’t expect a character study but a truncated telling of events. It’s an enigmatic performance from Phoenix and he’s always engrossing; the drama, however, is zilch.
Hurried, unfocused, and often boring, it’s a technical marvel with sumptuous visuals but a decent script would have helped. There’s no sense of the wider historical forces that enabled or expanded the Napoleonic Wars, or any concerted attempt to explore the lad’s mammoth fall. Here, it just … happens.
I’ll wait for the four-hour cut I keep hearing about.
I mind this being “hilarious” back in the day. I think I might have lost my mind. It’s a rubbish piece of work, barely funny, and just nasty. Some of the lines are shocking, the story is ludicrous, and there is an unbearable air of smugness to it all. The cast are also insufferable, really mediocre actors. Oh, we had a wild night and that’s somehow rib-splitting. Grow up. Plonkers.
Wanderings and ... wonderings. 