Reviews

*** MINOR SPOILER ABOUT A PREDICTABLE EVENT ***

Hugely charming film that saw me fall for Amanda Langlet (Margot) within two minutes of her first appearance. Her smile is brighter than a flashbulb.

I spent most of my time wishing I could jump up onto the screen but I couldn't decide if I'd hug the always radiant Margot or smack the gauche prat Gaspard for being so oafishly blind to her charms.

Sure, it's typically French with it's "je pense, je parle, je fait rien" plot but it's a pleasure to be in the company of some of the characters.

Oh, and did I mention that Amanda Langlet alone makes it worth the price of admission?

*** WARNING !!! SPOILERS !!! SPOILERS !!! ***

This movie has it all! Blood, laughs galore, incisive social satire and a senile dog with legs of jelly!

This ode to low paid workers the world over (stand up and fight!) has tickled ribs at film festivals in Ireland and Britain. Targets include big business, small business that wishes it were big business, Dublin's taxi drivers (prior to deregulation) and a weird religion type cult thing called "Diametric Scientifics" by some weirdo called Elron Cupboard.

This short is snappy and cuts to the chase. especially at the end when all the sharp weapons come out to play.

Until recently it held the record for the most blood spilt in an Irish short film.

Couldn't have done it better myself!

***SPOILERS*** ***SPOILERS*** I wasted enough time going to see this steaming pile of crap so I don't want to waste even more by writing a very long comment on it's awfulness. Don't bother reading any more of this if you want to see it and be ... um ... 'surprised' by it's moronic plot 'twists'.

Anyway, on to a postmortem of a lumbering beast that is an insult to everybody who lost their lives in the raid.

Who wrote the screenplay? This has some of the worst dialogue I've heard since Titanic. Why is it so damn long? Three hours of this bum numbing, spirit sapping, inertia inducing, brain scraping mush is almost criminal.

And why does so much of it make so little sense? If a fighter plane crashes nose first into water at high speed surely the pilot would be so badly injured he would have a little trouble getting out? Oh, and if that wasn't stupid enough how about Affleck getting out of a bomber after it crash lands?

How about the fact that our two dunce heroes seem to be the only two servicemen on the island capable of helping out that afternoon. Need some blood? Drain these guys. Need to cut some sailors out a capsized ship? Ask these flyboys. Need to shoot down part of a task force that has been training for weeks to pull off this raid? Ask these two hungover sots.

And finally, of course, there's the small matter of Affleck not bothering to contact his girlfriend to let her know that he's actually alive. No, instead he just decided to ... um ... show up? This after a trip that probably took close to three weeks? (I'm not even going to go into his ridiculous refusal to spend the night with her before he left for England.)

>sigh< This is the kind of movie that should be deemed criminally stupid.

Those of you who haven't read the book should really do so before watching the film.

How can anybody not have gotten around to reading these books yet? However, I digress.

Why wasn't I bowled over by this? Simple answer. Tom Ripley may have bisexual leanings but he's not hysterical. The key turning point in the book is a premeditated murder but this adaptation portrays it as a crime of passion. The truly chilling aspect of his character in Highsmith's novel is the ease with which he plans and executes this murder, presumably his first.

This threw me completely. I didn't expect the film to be able to get things like Tom's poor opinion of Dickie's Italian but I thought getting the motive right would have been possible.

But for the changes to Tom's character I though the film was actually quite good. Philip Seymour Hoffman was superb as Freddie Miles. The opening sequence was a bravura piece of film-making, expertly edited by Walter Murch. The potentially confusing plot and web of coincidences was handled quite well.

But after the murder I just kept on thinking of how off the mark the film was.

Too bad.