Reviews

I've never been more disappointed in a film in my life. It seemed quite promising at the start, the president is practising his speech and then there's a graphic scene in New York City which suggests this will be a deadly serious film, which is exactly what I was hoping for. But it all goes rapidly downhill from there.

You soon learn that this isn't really a film about a civil war, or apparently about anything at all. It seems to have been made as a vehicle to tap into the current societal disharmony but it doesn't have anything to say, no points to make about anything, and thus all the viewer's natural questions are never answered. I don't need to be spoon fed everything, but there is really nothing here. War and violence are bad? Yep we know. But sometimes war is forced on you. If someone is attacking you, you can't just stand there and opt out of it. Not wanting it to happen doesn't stop it happening. There is nothing profound here.

The story is told from the perspective of some photojournalists, whose characters just don't ring true at all. And then you're introduced to a young female wannabe photojournalist who tags along with the experienced older ones. She is instantly dislikeable and this impression is only reinforced as time goes on. She looks very young, apparently she is 25 but looks a lot younger, and behaves like someone half her age. She has no common sense, isn't remotely toughened up or street wise, and yet wants to get in the thick of a brutal war and take graphic photos? Every time she is in a dangerous situation she acts like a deer in the headlights and puts her companions in danger. The first time she takes a photo I noticed she was winding the film on... wait, what? Yes that's one of the many stupid things in this film. I suppose we're supposed to think it's cool and retro, rather than stupid because it's so impractical.

You wouldn't know there was a war going on. The journalists go on a road trip without security and encounter an America which is largely empty - where are all the people? The roads are empty, the cities are empty. They go to a gas station. They go to a small town and try on some dresses. One time, a car is racing up on them - who is this? Driving like a madman? Oh it's our journalist friends! Instead of pulling over and talking, let's both race along side-by-side dangerously, what a good idea? What else shall we do? How about the passengers dive into each other's vehicle through the windows! That's what serious adults, serious journalists do, right? What a jape! Then the new car races off with our intrepid young journalist, oh no! Where could they be? We come up on some military figures who have detained them, and are apparently engaged in committing war crimes and atrocities. But it's okay, they are soldiers on OUR side and so our press badges will make us immune! They won't care that we're press and could get them in serious trouble, it will all be fine.

I am saddened by the film because it is such a missed opportunity. It seems to be about elevating the profession of photojournalists to hero status but it just fell completely flat. It was never explained why California and Texas of all places would team up, and how come the US military wasn't receiving support from its many powerful Nato allies, which is undoubtedly what would happen if any real succession were ever attempted. There is a compelling story to be told about society's divisions but this sure ain't it.

This new series sounded like it would be fascinating and I expected to see obvious cases of police misconduct or criminality which I would be appalled by, and enjoy seeing the corrupt coppers convicted. However, it very quickly became apparent that the programme makers have a very biased agenda and the facts as presented were misleading and one-sided, which is why police they accused of various things ended up being acquitted at court by a jury, and/or found not to have committed misconduct either. There was one case where the police investigators watched footage of a woman being searched, this woman was kicking out and resisting so of course she had to be restrained by a number of officers. This is what they are trained to do. The investigators acted shocked that they had to restrain her? Had they forgotten that sometimes people in custody can do harm to officers or themselves? They need to be searched, and if they resist, some degree of force is inevitably going to be needed. To me it looked nothing remarkable, and it turned out that this was indeed the case, the officers had done nothing wrong. But the investigators and programme makers wanted us to think it was some egregious act of extreme misconduct? Ridiculous. All I saw here was senior officers completely out of touch with the reality of frontline policing, who seem very eager to throw their own officers under the bus.

This review contains major spoilers. I will be discussing major plot points and the ending. Please don't read further if you don't want to know what happens in the film.

A Spanish-speaking couple arrive in America from Spain and show their passports to the immigration officer who asks them to come with him while further checks are made. The woman is Spanish and the man is originally from Venezuela. The officers questioned them and their questions were perfectly reasonable, especially in light of what we learned about the two subsequently. It became apparent that the man had been trying to game the immigration system and was with this Spanish woman out of convenience, which the Spanish woman had genuinely been unaware of. All of the acting and direction in the film was excellent. I have never been in this sort of situation of being questioned by immigration officers but everything rang true and felt authentic, it was almost like watching a fly on the wall documentary.

Near the end the film got to the point where it looked like the woman would be allowed entry into the US because she had done nothing wrong and had a legitimate visa but the man would be refused because he was there under false pretences and had tricked his female companion. And then right at the end, the immigration officer called them to his desk, stamped their pasports, gave them back to them and welcomed them to America. Then it ended. I still don't know what the film's message was? Is it that the immigration system is stupid and should have just let them in (and perhaps should just let anyone in) without asking questions? Why after establishing clearly that the man was there under dubious circumstances, would they have allowed him in? It made no sense to me. He had no visa in his own right and didn't even have a job offer. If they had denied him entry then I don't think many people would have taken issue with it. My guess is a lot of people would have been confused by this ending.

It is a political film with a political message, but if that message is misunderstood by its viewers then the film has to be considered a failure. However, the acting, writing and direction are so good that it is still worth seeing. Perhaps you will understand it better than I do. Well made but confusing film.

This film is frustrating and a real missed opportunity to have been great. The positives, the acting all round is great, especially from Donald Sutherland. The cinematography is a delight as well.

When the late Mr Harrigan is acting as Craig's personal hitman, there should have been some sort of quid quo pro from Craig, like he was making a deal with the devil so there should have been some price he had to pay, but... there wasn't anything. He just got him to kill a couple of people and then the film ended. There was no twist, no pay-off. As someone else suggested, a good twist could have been that Mr Harrigan had killed Craig's mother for some reason and tied it all together.

The film started great, set up a compelling mystery but then you find there isn't one. Stephen King, come on man, you can do better than this.

This film is vile from start to finish. As a revenge story it fails at the first hurdle because the person you are supposed to be rooting for is even less likeable than the people he's getting revenge against.

I don't believe most of the positive reviews of this film or the rating are genuine, I think most people would be disgusted by the level of violence, even people who normally watch violent films. I liked Kill List, I mean the violence in that was extreme at times, but it all fit with the plot and wasn't out of place, it wasn't there just to horrify you like it is here. Once upon a time this sort of thing would never have been allowed to be shown on television or even the cinema.

The revenge story is paper thin and makes no sense, not helped by the fact all the actors mumble their lines throughout. And the ending is a bait and switch, where the film completely jumps the shark. I'll make sure not to watch anything by this writer / director again.

The first half is quite good but then it becomes a very very slow and tedious soap opera. The two leads have zero chemistry and the woman character is thoroughly unlikeable. At one point in the script the male lead says she is full of herself and that's exactly how she's been written.

Some of the acting is very good and convincing from the other players. The 'twist' when it comes was predictable from the beginning and I had hoped I was wrong, and surely it wouldn't be THAT obvious, but yes it was. The film is very long but it's a very simplistic story stretched very thin and you won't miss much by fast forwarding the slow talky parts.

The violence is extreme and gratuitous. The ending ridiculous and unsatisfying. This has been compared to New World (2013) but that was far superior.

You might like this but I didn't and you probably won't either.

There are good performances in this drama but neither the seditious general nor the president are people you feel like rooting for.

The general is completely unlikeable, but he is absolutely right about the stupidity of disarming and trusting that the Russians will do the same.

On the other hand, the president is likeable and you want him to prevail against the coup plotters, and yet his policy to disarm is bordering on, if not actually treasonous itself.

So really it's quite a strange film. I enjoyed it somewhat for the star performances but you don't really want either side to 'win'.

The message of this episode: evil America lectured by the wise and benevolent Russia and China that if only America laid down its weapons, the world would be peaceful! Events in Ukraine this year show what nonsense that is. The idea we can disarm the world and all hold hands and live happily is dangerous nonsense. America may not be perfect but it's a lot less imperfect than the alternatives.

This starts off quite well and has some good tense moments such as during the initial encounter between the characters of Russell Crowe and Caren Pistorius. The trouble after this is that Pistorius's character who you are presumably supposed to be rooting for, is not likeable whatsoever so I imagine I wasn't the only one rooting for the 'bad guy'. Obviously in real life I wouldn't like someone going round killing and hurting people, but in this movie, it was fun watching him messing with her.

So the film is set up for a thrilling second half, but then as others have said, it turns into torture porn as the producers might have been worried the viewer would identify with the 'villain' a bit too much, so they decide to make him do terrible things so you remember who it is you're supposed to be siding with. Except it doesn't work because Pistorius is never likeable at any point, her acting is terrible throughout and she maintains the same expression and calm demeanour even as she supposedly fears for her life and those of her loved ones, and people are dying around her. She later takes a severe beating from Crowe's character who is a huge strong man, and she shrugs these off like it's nothing. At the end of the film she is still calm and barely has a scratch on her, or a hair out of place. But she triumphed against the bad man, hurrah! A darker but I daresay more satisfying ending would have been if our anti-hero had triumphed or at least got away, but I guess films have to be simple and neatly tie everything up nowadays.

Russell Crowe's performance is good but he deserved a better co-star and the film needed a better writer.

This film is a complete mess from start to finish. There is a 2019 TV mini-series called Hatton Garden which despite being made for TV is light years ahead of King of Thieves in production values, keeping faithful authenticity of the real events, tension and gritty realism. King of Thieves predictably plays it like a semi-comedy, cuddly harmless old men who didn't really do anything wrong and who are like Robin Hood stealing from the undeserving rich. It also lies and says none of the men ever used violence in their previous criminal activities, which of course it does to further get you to sympathise with them and see them as harmless and noble.

The real story is compelling and would have made a great movie in the right hands, but this director and writer have made a complete mess of it. I can only encourage you to find the aforementioned mini-series and see what this film should have been.

I found this gripping from start to finish, even though we already know how it ends, which is a measure of how impressively written and acted it was.

As for the accuracy or alleged lack of, I don't know all the ins and outs and what the truth is. But I don't think supporters of Jeremy Bamber should feel too aggrieved by this programme. Why? For one, because it shows very effectively how atrocious the police mishandling of the investigation was, negligent on a breathtaking scale.

I don't know who committed the murders. If I had to guess, I'd guess Jeremy did. But, if I was on a jury I would definitely vote to acquit him. Why? Because the proof that he did it just isn't there. Anything the police say and any evidence they obtained from the scene can't be relied upon at all, because of their gross incompetence and negligence. All of the forensic and photographic evidence should have been thrown out at trial due to its unreliability. And then you're just left with his aggrieved, jilted ex-girlfriend's word against his. He has served 35 years, 10 years longer than the original trial judge asked for. You can't lock someone up for life on a guess that they probably did it, it has to be beyond reasonable doubt, and his conviction looks very dodgy to me.

It doesn't surprise me that so many people think Steve Fulcher is the victim of an unfair system, especially after watching this very one-sided series which does a hatchet job on the police and the IPCC. The truth is that Fulcher didn't just bend the PACE rules, he smashed them to pieces and stamped all over them, despite repeated warnings by his colleagues about the consequences and implications for any potential prosecution, warnings which were proven correct when a judge rightly ruled the confession inadmissible.

Fulcher threatened and coerced the suspect, repeatedly refused him access to a solicitor as is his legal right, took him to the middle of nowhere, surrounded by police officers and made threats towards his family if he didn't say what he wanted him to say. This sort of thing is exactly precisely what PACE was designed to prevent, abuses which were common and infamous in the 1970s. Nobody knew this better than Fulcher and his decision to ignore it was arrogant and jeopardised the whole investigation.

At the end of the programme we see Fulcher give a radio interview where the programme makers hope the viewer has a short memory, because they present it as a binary choice between upholding a silly law on one hand, versus saving the life of a victim! Well who could possibly choose the silly law then? Except that is not what happened at all. The judge in the first trial did allow Fulcher's use of an exceptional circumstances in the case of the first victim, because as far as the police knew at that time, it WAS possible she was still alive. But that exception could not be made in the second case because it related to a historic murder and there was no question that the victim in that case was long dead, so the exception didn't and couldn't possibly apply. In that case the suspect should have been cautioned and interviewed at a police station. Fulcher knew that, his colleagues told him he was wrong, Fulcher ignored it and paid the price later. He can have nobody to blame but himself.

Another criticism I have is that 6 episodes was too many, and they could have dispensed with much of the overwrought relationship dramas which added nothing of value to the overall story.

This could and should have been a gripping story but the writers messed it up like you wouldn't believe. In fact the programme isn't really about the poisonings, it's about some drippy woman (Tracy Daszkiewicz) and her family drama, which mostly consist of her pleading with her spoiled kid that she is sorry mummy has to go to work. I watched these tedious scenes in disbelief. WHO CARES about this rubbish? The writers made the story all about her, with the poisonings merely the background to her tedious family melodrama.

I saw the real life woman interviewed on the BBC and she was just as drippy as in the drama. Why the writers chose to focus on this mediocre council figure is baffling.

Watch this if you want to see three hours of kids moaning that their mum has to go to work; residents moaning that the police have to do stuff to make their street safe; businesses moaning that revenues are down because of the disruption. Don't watch if you want to learn about the true story, or be entertained in any way.

For a supposed thriller there is nothing to be thrilled about here. The film moves at a snail's pace and there is never any actual excitement or drama, you don't care about what happens to the fiancée character because she is completely unlikeable and charmless, like a robot. Truly the fiancé was a fool for having any sympathy for her even when he found her and she was as cold as ice towards him. And then at the very end which is supposed to be dramatic? It really wasn't. I was just glad the film was over. I've seen a lot of great S Korean films but this isn't one of them.

It's a mystery to me why so many people think this is a great movie. Apart from being mind-numbingly slow and tedious (like, gasp, the Godfather), the worst thing is that the film insults the audience by cheating at the end.

SPOILER:

Early in the film we hear the line from the 'conversation' which goes 'he'd kill us if he got the chance'. This is spoken with the emphasis on 'kill'. At the end of the film it is changed so that the emphasis is on 'us'. So 'he'd *kill* us if he got the chance' changes to 'he'd kill *us* if he got the chance'. What a con! If we, the audience had heard the latter version early on, we'd know that the couple planned the murder and there would be no 'twist' (yawn) at the end.

Terribly overrated movie, which never gets going and never goes anywhere.

This is actually quite a nasty film, with no likable characters at all - it's made from Henry Hill's perspective (played by Ray Liotta) but I didn't like him; I'm not sure whether he was supposed to come across sympathetically but he didn't to me.

The film has some scenes of extreme violence, which I found pretty distasteful - watching someone get repeatedly graphically stabbed, having their head bashed in with a pistol butt, or having their head kicked in, isn't an enjoyable experience for me, call me weird.

There is little plot to the film, and what there is is slow and drawn out. You don't really care what happens to any of the characters, in fact I wanted them all to be put behind bars personally! This film sends out entirely the wrong message: being in the mafia is cool, violence is cool, being a criminal is cool. The 'Tommy' character is especially nasty and violent, and some of his scenes provide for uncomfortable viewing.

At the end of the film, Henry Hill avoids prison by ratting on his friends, not because of any high principles or because he's seen the light, but just to stay out of prison.

I know it's probably news to some of the people who have given this film high ratings but violence and crime are not glamorous and not something to be celebrated.

4/10 overall