Graham Marshall seems to have everything: a beautiful, dutiful wife. a great high-paying job in advertisement. A large, sprawling country estate where he can commute to the big city. Trouble starts for Graham when all this becomes dubious and questions arise about just how wonderful all these things really are. At its core A Shock to the System makes one think about what is important in life. For Graham it is really none of these things - because in some ways he never really had them. This is a first-rate black comedy along the lines of a Kind Hearts and Coronets(no Alec Guiness playing eight roles here) with Michael Caine giving a wickedly funny, humanizing portrayal of a man just trying to keep up with what is expected with the corporate ladder and maintaining the perching power that comes with being at the top. Caine, to borrow another reviewer's succinct modifier, is very Machivellian as he whittles away at all those people that stand in his way of keeping/maintaining/achieving power. Caine does it while making us like him. A true feat as we see him really do quite horrible things to quite horrible people. Based on Simon Brett's novel A Shock to the System is a morality play with no moral other than the end does indeed justify the means. Michael Caine glides through the role of this middle-age man being passed up at home and at work with charm, pathos, and his ever present wry sense of humour. This film is just fun and the dialog and script in general generate numerous good scenes as well as fresh plot developments. Aiding Caine is a well-experienced cast of good quality actors like Swoosie Kurtz as his hair-brained, belittling wife, Elizabeth McGovern as his beautiful, trustworthy secretary, John McMartin as his over-the-hill, tired, flat boss George, and Peter Riegert as the new young buck out to wipe the floor with anyone that stands in his yuppie way to the top of the business. Throughout the film we get Michael Caine narrating to us his thoughts and his mental evolution. Some of the best lines come here. Although very funny, depraved too I will give a bit as well, A Shock to the System pokes fun at the corporate environment, the Yuppie Revolution, and the whole keeping up with the Jones' mentality that affects American society so thoroughly today. Director Jan Egleson does a masterful job making us care and like Caine despite his killing for the horrible reason of supporting some kind of Social Darwinism. All of the victims are very unlikable characters embodying some catastrophic fatal flaw of what it takes to rise to the top. Definitely worth a look and easily the easiest way to succeed in business without even trying.
Review of A Shock to the System
