Harry Sterndale, a professional photographer, has not led a charmed life. As a schoolboy he was mercilessly bullied by his classmates. He began his career as an advertising executive, only to be unfairly sacked from his job. His career as a photographer has not prospered, and he lost most of his savings when he was foolishly persuaded to invest in a Madoff-style Ponzi scheme. His wife, a former model named Lisa, has left him for a younger and more successful rival. To cap it all he is informed by his doctor that he is suffering from cancer and only has a few weeks to live.
Harry decides to use the short time remaining to him on this earth to kill all those who have wronged him, beginning with Lisa and the man behind the Ponzi scheme. He also arranges for a hit-man to kill him in the hope that his new girlfriend Jill will benefit from a massive insurance pay-out. Of course, as is normal in black comedies like this, it turns out that the diagnosis was mistaken, leaving him with two problems; how does he prevent the hit-man from carrying out his side of the bargain, and how does he avoid being convicted for five murders.
The film was not well received by critics, and Empire magazine named it the 42nd worst movie of all time. I would agree that the basic concept may well seem tasteless or offensive to many. Black comedy, however, is a genre which has always enjoyed a licence to find humour in matters not normally regarded as humorous. Nuclear war, for example, might not strike people as a natural subject for laughter, yet Kubrick's "Dr Strangelove" is essentially an extended joke about a nuclear holocaust. Those who consider it in bad taste to make jokes about murder should remember that Robert Hamer's "Kind Hearts and Coronets", in which the hero cheerfully bumps off several members of his own family, is frequently cited as one of the greatest British comedies of all time.
That is not to say that "Parting Shots" is a film in the same league as Kubrick's or Hamer's. It suffers from a number of faults, mostly to do with the casting. The singer Chris Rea, cast as Harry, demonstrated amply why this turned out to be not only his first acting role but also his last. Diana Rigg may be one of Britain's leading actresses, but was far too old for the role of Lisa. Rigg is actually thirteen years older than Rea, so her character, who is supposed to be a hard, brassy, gold-digging bimbo ended up seeming more like a desperate, pathetic cradle-snatcher. Joanna Lumley seemed miscast as a Cockney barmaid, especially as she seemed to be struggling with the accent, occasionally slipping back into her normal plummy tones.
And yet the film did not strike me as being as bad as some of the critics made out. There are some better acting contributions from Felicity Kendall as Jill, the late Oliver Reed in his penultimate film as the hit-man and Bob Hoskins as the greasy fraudster Gerard Layton. There were also some very amusing scenes- I particularly liked the one where Harry and Jill are patronised and insulted by the staff in that pretentious and snobbish restaurant, a scene doubtless inspired by director Michael Winner's other job as a restaurant critic. The chef whose arrogant tantrums earn him a place on Harry's death-list is named Renzo Locatelli- a remarkable choice of name given that there actually is a well-known London chef named Giorgio Locatelli. Either Giorgio was in on the joke or Winner was sailing perilously close to the wind as regards the law of libel.
Possibly some of the criticism was inspired by dislike of Winner, a high-profile television personality and a controversial figure in Britain. The reviewer for "Total Film" magazine slated "Parting Shots" for its alleged "painfully transparent pro-capital punishment agenda", which struck me as an over-literal reading. There is a big difference between a black comedy and something like Winner's "Death Wish" series, which we are intended to take seriously (difficult though that may be at times) and which certainly does have such an agenda. Apart from the swindler Layton, none of Harry's victims is actually guilty of a criminal offence, and Winner is certainly not suggesting that, in the real world, adultery, bullying or bad manners should be punishable by death.
What Winner is doing is holding a satirical mirror up to the Britain of the late nineties, with all its greed, materialism and vulgarity, with its crass ethos that nothing matters in life except money and success. "Parting Shots" does for Britain what John Waters' "Serial Mom", another nineties black comedy, did for American suburbia; both films have a central character who takes to killing people of whom he or she disapproves, often for trivial reasons. Of the two films, "Serial Mom" is the better, if only because Winner needed someone as accomplished as Kathleen Turner rather than the wooden Rea in the leading role. "Parting Shots" may be in defiantly bad taste, but its satire is often effective and on target. Literally speaking, the real-life equivalents of Lisa, Layton and Renzo do not deserve the death penalty. Metaphorically speaking, the vices which they represent should be hanged by the neck until dead. 6/10
Harry decides to use the short time remaining to him on this earth to kill all those who have wronged him, beginning with Lisa and the man behind the Ponzi scheme. He also arranges for a hit-man to kill him in the hope that his new girlfriend Jill will benefit from a massive insurance pay-out. Of course, as is normal in black comedies like this, it turns out that the diagnosis was mistaken, leaving him with two problems; how does he prevent the hit-man from carrying out his side of the bargain, and how does he avoid being convicted for five murders.
The film was not well received by critics, and Empire magazine named it the 42nd worst movie of all time. I would agree that the basic concept may well seem tasteless or offensive to many. Black comedy, however, is a genre which has always enjoyed a licence to find humour in matters not normally regarded as humorous. Nuclear war, for example, might not strike people as a natural subject for laughter, yet Kubrick's "Dr Strangelove" is essentially an extended joke about a nuclear holocaust. Those who consider it in bad taste to make jokes about murder should remember that Robert Hamer's "Kind Hearts and Coronets", in which the hero cheerfully bumps off several members of his own family, is frequently cited as one of the greatest British comedies of all time.
That is not to say that "Parting Shots" is a film in the same league as Kubrick's or Hamer's. It suffers from a number of faults, mostly to do with the casting. The singer Chris Rea, cast as Harry, demonstrated amply why this turned out to be not only his first acting role but also his last. Diana Rigg may be one of Britain's leading actresses, but was far too old for the role of Lisa. Rigg is actually thirteen years older than Rea, so her character, who is supposed to be a hard, brassy, gold-digging bimbo ended up seeming more like a desperate, pathetic cradle-snatcher. Joanna Lumley seemed miscast as a Cockney barmaid, especially as she seemed to be struggling with the accent, occasionally slipping back into her normal plummy tones.
And yet the film did not strike me as being as bad as some of the critics made out. There are some better acting contributions from Felicity Kendall as Jill, the late Oliver Reed in his penultimate film as the hit-man and Bob Hoskins as the greasy fraudster Gerard Layton. There were also some very amusing scenes- I particularly liked the one where Harry and Jill are patronised and insulted by the staff in that pretentious and snobbish restaurant, a scene doubtless inspired by director Michael Winner's other job as a restaurant critic. The chef whose arrogant tantrums earn him a place on Harry's death-list is named Renzo Locatelli- a remarkable choice of name given that there actually is a well-known London chef named Giorgio Locatelli. Either Giorgio was in on the joke or Winner was sailing perilously close to the wind as regards the law of libel.
Possibly some of the criticism was inspired by dislike of Winner, a high-profile television personality and a controversial figure in Britain. The reviewer for "Total Film" magazine slated "Parting Shots" for its alleged "painfully transparent pro-capital punishment agenda", which struck me as an over-literal reading. There is a big difference between a black comedy and something like Winner's "Death Wish" series, which we are intended to take seriously (difficult though that may be at times) and which certainly does have such an agenda. Apart from the swindler Layton, none of Harry's victims is actually guilty of a criminal offence, and Winner is certainly not suggesting that, in the real world, adultery, bullying or bad manners should be punishable by death.
What Winner is doing is holding a satirical mirror up to the Britain of the late nineties, with all its greed, materialism and vulgarity, with its crass ethos that nothing matters in life except money and success. "Parting Shots" does for Britain what John Waters' "Serial Mom", another nineties black comedy, did for American suburbia; both films have a central character who takes to killing people of whom he or she disapproves, often for trivial reasons. Of the two films, "Serial Mom" is the better, if only because Winner needed someone as accomplished as Kathleen Turner rather than the wooden Rea in the leading role. "Parting Shots" may be in defiantly bad taste, but its satire is often effective and on target. Literally speaking, the real-life equivalents of Lisa, Layton and Renzo do not deserve the death penalty. Metaphorically speaking, the vices which they represent should be hanged by the neck until dead. 6/10
