Review of A Shock to the System

Director Jan Egleson's corporate revenge thriller "A Shock to the System" is the kind of movie where evil trounces evil. Michael Caine is cast as a career-minded adverting executive with a wife and a mortgage who is in line for a richly deserved promotion. Everybody believes that he will get his promotion, including his wife who like to short out their home electric system with her stair master exercise machine. Unfortunately, Graham Marshall (Michael Caine of "Funeral in Berlin) learns to his chagrin that he has lost his promotion to another company employment. The humor underlying this big business melodrama is as hopelessly amoral as the protagonist is murderous. Caine is a genuinely evil. He winds up killing his way to the top of his advertising firm. A family man who rides a commuter train to work in New York City in the morning, Graham isn't pleased about losing his long-sought affair promotion. The first half of the action is slow-going, with lots of exposition, but Egleson ramps up the action considerably during the second half. Our hero Graham Marshall"), isn't pleased when a younger man, Robert Benham (Peter Riegert of "Animal House"), lands the promotion. Caine has to kiss ass while Benham takes the company in a different direction. Meanwhile, Graham is having trouble with his wife, Leslie (Swoosie Kurtz), and her infernal stair-master machine. Virtually, every time that she uses the exercise machine, the stairmaster shortens out the electricity and Graham has to reset it. He gets the surprise of his life when he is shocked trying to reset his breaking box. In short, Graham kills his wife as well as several more corporate big-wigs until he ends up running the business. "A Shock to the System" is a ghoulish bit of nonsense that doesn't wear out its welcome at 88 minutes.