I'm a big fan of Brit Crime and I've seen some crackers this year: The Squeeze and Clash By Night being two barely anyone talks about. The Offence is another one hardly anybody mentions. It's not quite up there with Get Carter, Brighton Rock and The Long Good Friday, but it is excellent in its own way.

Sean Connery plays Johnson a police Sergeant investigating a child murder and rape case. When the film started I thought he was playing a typical nasty bastard. What he manages to do is bring humanity and believability to a role which could easily end up being camp. Vivien Merchant is also brilliant as his long suffering wife, a role which could easily end up being one dimensional. Fellow Scot, Ian Bannen also brilliant as the criminal held in custody who manages to be creepy, but also smart. And of course veteran actor, Trevor Howard is intense as Johnson's superior.

Sidney Lumet always gets superb performances from his actors and can make two people talking in a room incredibly immersive. Sadly these are now rare skills from directors who are overly reliant on special effects and shock tactics to mask paper-thin plots and weak characterisation.

Despite being made in the early 1970s the film is still shocking now. There's been many films dealing with child sexual abuse since. Silly and laughable vigilante films like "Hard Candy", misguided humanising films like "The Woodsman" or sensationalised victim films "No Child Of Mine". What is lacking in modern films like "Blitz" and "Harry Brown" is they are perfectly fine films but don't have any depth. There's a real lack of existential films dealing with Sartrean suffering and pathos.Sean Connery plays a broken man who can't be fixed and conveys more in 20 minutes than it takes some two television series to do. The script is also sharp: "It's funny the more I drink, the more sober I get." Indeed. This film wasn't the success people thought it would be with the star power of Sean Connery, it was too dark and too beguiling, but it's all the better for it.

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The Freakmaker is about a crazy scientist (Donald Pleasence) who creates half-human, half-plant hybrids for his circus freakshow. Eventually the "freaks" turn on him.

The film is directed by Jack Cardiff who is best known as a cinematographer creating a stunning body of work with films like: The Red Shoes and Black Narcissus. His directioral films have not been as critically acclaimed; they came out at a time when the British film industry was heading towards ruin. The Girl On A Motorcycle is a very good existential biker film with some stunning photography. The Freakmaker has some excellent time lapse photography of plants and some great performances from Donald Pleasence who hams it up, but still manages to be creepy and insidious. A young Tom Baker who has good screen presence and is physically imposing as he is over six feet tall. Julie Ege is a cult film actress who is an underrated actress and this film gives her something to do other than take her clothes off.

I consider it to be an above average B-Movie horror with some genuinely disturbing moments and it manages to be a bit more than a campy homage to Tod Browning's "Freaks". The Blu-Ray from Diabolik has great colour bringing out the garish palette and features clear Mono sound.

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Well this one surprised me, at how well it's actually aged...

...At least, it wasn't anywhere near as disastrous as I'd expected to have done so!

Having not seen it since the nineties, when things like this, and it's brilliant predecessor Clerks were my thing, I was happy to stumble across the DVD again at a boot fair.

Basically, an ultimate slacker movie centred around the relationship between the grossly immature and overly geeky and intense Brodie (Jason Lee), and his girlfriend Rene (Shanen Doherty), who he is ingrave danger of losing as she wants him to grow up, and stop being such a complete tool, he sets off on an everyday oddysy / adventure / quest to win her back in the local shopping mall, with the aid of his friends, including the stallwarts Jay and Silent Bob.

And with Ben Affleck continuing his mean jock promoted to local store manager in a sharp suit asshole role with aplomb stealing Rene away to the approval of her dad played by Michael Rooker,.. who together, play the Darth Vader and Emperor to Brodie's low rent Luke Skywalker in what is basically a low rent, everyday Star Wars episode in a shopping mall death star.

Of course, Kevin Smith was well into comic books, comic lore, Sci-Fi and cultural references long before Marvel had even conceived of it's global cinematic dominion, so this was pretty obscure at the time of release, and has actually grown in relevance as the rest of the world has caught up with it, in it's cultural preferences.

This even has Stan Lee in it!!!

So while it has actually done the reverse thing of the more common thing of ageing badly, the other surprise is how actually (relatively) enlightened it's attitudes to men and women's relationships are...

(for the time, and it still has the odd wobbly moment, but nothing that can't be forgiven :)

...But actually quite funny still and with quite a sharp wit all round.... lot's of fun.

A great way to spend a couple of hours, hanging out in the mall with flaky friends, while plotting the downfall of the evil empire :)

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It was poorly made, badly acted, and pure exploitation of the lamest music genre ever. But dammit, it was fun. Sure, Jeff Goldblum's early performance is an embarrassment, but teenage Terri Nunn is a total hoot. The late disco diva, Paul Jabara, is also a campy treat. Then there's Donna Summer, the Commodores, and a truckload of Casablanca Records disco music. The dopiest scene is perhaps the roadie for the Commodores trying to prove to a cop that he's with the band, completely stupid. Or the dancing Hispanic, Marv the Leatherman, who proclaims, "I love to dance...everything else is boolshit!" Still, I liked the movie, all of it.

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Dwight, a homeless and mentally scarred vagrant, is informed that the man who killed both his parents is about to be released from prison. Springing into action he sets off on a quest for revenge without fully appreciating the consequences of his actions.
This is a very enjoyable thriller quite unlike other vengeance films in that the protagonist really doesn’t have a plan other than to kill the man he believes killed his parents. Guaranteed that things will turn out horribly wrong, Dwight then he has to deal with the wrath of the vicious clan who in turn decide not to involve the police in this family matter.
As a morality tale it works fine being that you can believe this kind of situation could occur, and thankfully the story doesn’t fall into the usual preachy territory of vengeance films and instead sustains an edgy and tense atmosphere right through to the end.

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A lot of people don't care for this film and dismiss it on points which are largely misunderstood. It's not a horror film that lacks logic, believability and sufficient tension. It's another of Tobe Hooper's satirical dissections of the family unit cloaked in outrageous horror tropes. Mind you, "Mortuary" has its share of flaws (notably some poor CGI during the film's climax) , but it's also entertaining in a manner not unlike Hooper's "Eaten Alive", "Poltergeist" and even "The Funhouse", just ramped up a bit more on its own absurdist terms.

If you watch "Mortuary" from this perspective, you will appreciate the sometimes laugh-out-loud humor rather than abolish the whimsical direction which is misconstrued as serious horror. Lighten up, horror fans. Even "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre" frequently snickered at its own fearful premise.

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Interesting character study that seems to promote the misguided notion that if a wife screws around and has sex with another guy, the husband should get over it. The wife's reason? "Because I wanted to." The screenplay repeats the mantra that the man who walks away from such a situation is the asshole.

Solid cast and all the technical aspects are bulletproof, but the crazy free love heart of the film is so hippy dippy and unrealistic that it sabotages what should have been a deep and introspective piece of work. It's worth watching, in spite of the foolish concepts.

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Was recommended this film, but my advice is don't bother. It's stupid, not very funny, rotten script written by half-wits, and the beavers are not convincing. Naturally I did not explore the special features on the Blu-ray, which include things about the beavers - as if that's something they feel proud of.
Scratch it off your CV guys.

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Entertaining, albeit absurd depiction of a newsroom. I've been around newspaper offices off and on most of my life from spelling bee tours as a youth (before achievement was considered politically incorrect), composing advertisements in my teens, and years of slogging through work in layout and camera rooms. Maybe things were different in the 50's, but I never saw a bunch of characters strutting around making endless speeches about the newspaper game with tongues-in-cheek so deep they must have pulled muscles. No, this is closer to the style of drama Jack Webb is best known for on his TV series, Dragnet. Corny but mildly entertaining.

There's a whole bunch of familiar faces in the cast, the lot of them chewing so much scenery that dentists would shudder. William Conrad, in particular, is so animated that his hard-boiled city desk editor is played for comedic relief. Fact is, only the subplot about the missing girl attempts any real drama, but ends up as melodrama. Add gobs of sentiment to the other subplot about Webb's character not wanting to adopt a child.

If nothing else, the production values are clean as a whistle and the polished black and white lens work is lean and efficient. So nuke up some popcorn and queue up the pseudo noir stylings Mark VII Ltd. was best known for.

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Sci-Fi Romantic tragi-comedy.

Given this was written by the baffling genius that is Charlie Kaufman, and directed by the quite singular Michel Gondry, this was always going to be a double bonkers brain scrambler...

...And so it is...

...In fact, that's the plot too!

Jim Carey's grim and miserable Joel is suffering, for reasons he can't quite put his finger on, until he meets Kate Winslet's super-flake Clementine at a train station... and the two feel drawn together, almost like they've met before.

And that's because they have.

Turns out, they had a doomed, and fractious relationship, that made both so miserable, that Clementine had Joel erased from her memory, causing double despair to Joel, so he decides he can't live with that, and resolves to have her erased from his memory too.

Until, of course, he changes his mind... unfortunately, while the procedure is taking place.

The movie follows Joel being chased through his own mind and memories by this erasing procedure as he tries to preserve the memory of Clementine in the most obscure corners of his brain.

It is, of course (consistent with the subject matter) quite a confusing film from the outset, using an almost Christopher Nolan-esque chopped and re-sorted time structure, but gradually, it pulls together and makes sense.

It's all very clever, and seems a very writer-ly piece of zany philosophical, meditative madness, but what emerges at the end is sense of real warmth, and heart... and there's plenty of laughs along the way.

This was one of my pre-lockdown charity shop DVD purchases, which I've watched a couple of times since, and it is growing on me more and more.

One for the 21st century romantics.

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Dragon's Forever reunited the Peking Opera Brothers Jackie Chan, Yuen Biao and Sammo Hung. All incredible performers. This film also has a young Fruit Chan (Made In Hong Kong, Three Extremes) co-directing some scenes.

Jackie Chan plays a sort of sleazy playboy type, cast against his usual type of the hapless goofball boy next door, Sammo Hung plays a goofier role than usual almost like Leslie Nielsen in Naked Gun where he gets caught up in situations despite having good intentions and Yuen Biao plays a charismatic madman criminal.

I think the main appeal of his film is for HK action cinema fans, unlike films like Police Story and The Killer it has less universal appeal. The joy for me is watching each actor trying to outdo each. There's some incredibly hard falls taken as well as stuntmen being thrown through sugar glass windows. The fights with all three leads show how good their timing and athleticism is. Credit also goes to hardkicking Benny Urquidez and excellent stuntman Yuen Wah who uses a cigar as a prop.

The Blu-Ray from 88 Films feature an incredible looking print with 5.1 sound and director's commentary.

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Not a great film, but a nice soundtrack by the main man. Serge Gainsbourg looks incredibly cool to the point that he could rival Alain Delon. His performance is a bit flat, possibly because he wasn't directing. Jane Birkin also not really given much to do apart from being naked.

The DVD has poor picture quality, it's almost like an upscaled VHS tape and only 2.0 sound.

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Ineffably sweet, but also incredibly sad. The anchor of the film is young Hodder's unyielding optimism even when faced with cruelty and melancholy. The main cast is perfect, and none of the characters are reduced to easy, one-dimensional caricatures. Finally, the music soundtrack cannot be ignored. For a family film, it's quite profound and moving.

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This is a weird one. I first heard about from the TV Series OutTHERE which featured clips from weird, cult films like Even Hitler Had A Girlfriend, Baby Cart at River Styx and The Toxic Avenger. As a connection later episodes were presented by Emily Booth.

It's a really obscure high-camp comedy possibly inspired by films like Russ Meyer's Fanny Hill (?) more so than historical films. To be honest the only late 90s\00s film I rate which is a campy homage to 60s\70s films is Pervert! which is a nod to Russ Meyer and great fun, but not a great film. Ken Russel's pastiche of his own Tommy and Rocky Horror, Fall of the Louse of Usher is particularly poor.

Emily Booth is always nice to look at and there is a stellar cast of well know film and TV personalities including Jonathan Ross, stand up comedian Mark Lamarr and musician\poet\artist Sexton Ming. Unfortunately these aren't necessarily great actors, but it's a bit like Who Killed Bambi? where the weirdness sort of pulls it through. Also be warned like a lot of British sex comedies; it's not pant wettingly funny and it's about as sexy as shaving a hairy back.

TBH the plot is incomprehensible. The good quality sets and costumes hide the low budget. I would recommend this only for curiosity sake. Alex Chandon is a talented director and writer, who is best known for producing music videos for British Neo-Goth Metal band Cradle of Filth. Much like directors such as Richard Stanley it makes you wonder what they could do with 8-figure Hollywood budgets.

The DVD from Screen Edge is hen's teeth and expensive (£25+) given the quality of the film and scant extras it's not really worth it, I rented it back in the day. Picture quality is mediocre and sound is a lowly 2.0.

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Most pornography doesn't really belong in a film database, since it's just a collection of sex acts on film, the idea being to stimulate, not entertain. At some point in the 60s, several hardcore films decided to experiment with actual plots and characters. Mixed reactions, depending on whether one wanted interferences with one's...erm, stimulation. Personally, non-stop sex + extreme close-ups are too much. In the 70s, filmmakers stepped it up with a variety of subjects, which continued through to the latter part of the 80s. Once the video medium became the standard delivery mechanism, the renaissance ended.

One of the beacons of the era was 1974's Flesh Gordon, an erotic send-up of the 1936 Buster Crabbe serial, Flash Gordon. Director Howard Ziehm already had a fistful of adult films under his belt using the pseudonym Harry Hopper, but Flesh Gordon put him on the map. He continued making adult films under various names, ending his career with his final film in 1990, Flesh Gordon Meets the Cosmic Cheerleaders. One of his fake names was Linus Gator, which he used for Naughty Network, a send up of television featuring segments such as "Genital Hospital" (General Hospital), "T*R*A*S*H" (M*A*S*H), and "The Young and the Horny" (The Young and the Restless). The TV station airing these shows is WHAC. Considering the genre, it's well shot, funny, and yes, erotic. Particularly the "Wild & Crazy Kingdom" segment.

Obviously if you don't like adult films, you'll want to steer clear. But if you like your blue movies with an ornamental edge, you could do a lot worse than Naughty Network.

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Really difficult to rate this one as I am in two minds; it is dull, but it is gorgeous to look at. A 90s technostyle retelling of Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus. That is an achievement in itself. Titus is known as a tragedy. A fictional Roman army general Titus undergoes a long bloody war with Tamora, the queen of Goths. The theatre play is sometimes controversial when it is performed due to its violence and the rape of Lavina scene.

Anthony Hopkins does a fine job as Titus. Alan Cumming is good as Saturnius, the Roman leader; a thinly veiled attempt to make him look like a fascist dictator; is he Mussolini or Hitler though? We also have the lovely looking Laura Fraser as Lavina. The acting is good across the board and intentionally camp. The over the top acting doesn't match what little action there is. The stabbings have most of the violence off screen. There's surprisingly little blood given the stageplay's reputation and even the rape of Lavina is subtle. Don't get me wrong I wasn't expecting Straw Dogs, but I was hoping for something to justify the 18 certificate.

The film has Grade A production values with incredible set design and costumes. A throwback orgy scene to Barbarella, black Italian(?) motorbikes and bad guys who dress like extras from The Warriors albeit with bondage-style leathers. Shakespeare Purists will hate this, but it is its best feature for me. Really good original score as well. What ruins it for for me is it is way too long. At 162 minutes, it is an hour too long. I know it uses the original stage script for dialogue, but please cut it down.

The 90s\early 00s saw similar updated versions of Shakespeare with the hugely successful Romeo + Juliet which filters the tragic romance through a club culture lens, Hamlet with Ethan Hawke which I've not seen, BBC series ShakespeaRe-Told which in my opinion and probably nobody else's was largely unfunny and not very clever and worst of all although not based on a specific play: Shakespeare In Love - dreck.

This is with worth watching if you have the patience. As much as I like watching Anthony Hopkins in anything or Alan Cumming ham it up you need two cans of Red Bull to get through this one.

Twilight Time's Blu-Ray feature a superb print free of damage and clean 5.1 sound as well as commentaries. Shame about the cost due to it being OOP, although I think it is the definitive version at present.

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The world's first (and possibly only) all midget Western. It's as tacky as it sounds. Poor script, acting and badly sung songs make for a dreary experience.

I had high hopes after seeing the introduction where a well-dressed man speaks in front of a microphone and introduces the hero and villain. The plot involves some cattle rustling and the good guy must figure out whose behind it. There's a tacked on romantic subplot as well. Little people walking under saloon doors and riding miniature stallions sounds amusing on paper, but this is at best gimmicky and at worst pure exploitation. Cheap production values and bad acting make this fall way short. To add insult to injury the version I saw was out of sync.

This film has gone onto achieve cult status, more so for the absurdity of the premise and schlocky filmmaking style than it being a good film. As far as I know the film is public domain.

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One of the most outrageously funny satires ever, despite its total obscurity. A This Is Spinal Tap for the film industry, if you will, although on a shoe-string indie budget with little star power. Two thoroughly incompetent hack wannabe filmmakers decide to make a new religious epic along the lines of The Ten Commandments, an unfashionable task in itself in the 90's. Nice cameos from the Brady Bunch's Eve Plumb as herself (even though the director and producer continue to mistakenly call her Jan) and Soupy Sales, who is cast to play Moses in one of the film's best bits which I won't give away. Some friends of mine who work in the film industry were genuinely offended by this film, which I don't understand. The only way you could be bothered by this film's depiction of the filmmaking process is if it hits too close to home.

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Simple, old-school (ish) little horror/sci-fi TV movie (from HBO's Creature Features series) that claims to be a remake of the cheesy 1955 Roger Corman flick -- which was also co-produced by Samuel Z. Arkoff -- but it's not really a remake, just an allusion. Critics of the film have whimpered about the cheap fx, but it's better than the lousy CG in most every budget genre film these days, so for me it was actually an upgrade. I docked the film a star simply because I found Nastassja Kinski's character so annoying and presumptious.

If you're a fussy eater when it comes to this genre or of b-movies in general, then you'll surely be disappointed. Me, I like the whole small town breeds scary secrets formula and as long as that is delivered competently, I win.

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Ooooh I HATE this film!!!

It fills me with a wretched pulsing fury of loathing and detestation for it's crass, moronic script writing, "characters", and mostly for the fact that a couple of the story threads could have been made into potentially great films by themselves, but are swamped in the rest of this s*&t..

A steaming fetid turd of a perverted, over-sugared quasi -Hallmark card sentimentality that makes my eyes bleed, my ears clench and my anus twitch with rage so much I nearly lose a sofa cushion to the unknown!

...but as it happens, I find that that's quite cathartic, and I feel clean afterwards...

....And so I watch it every year :)

(I shall be hating it doubly hard this year... I may even pop something!)

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Unlike most Troma films this one features decent acting and production values. It drifts into the realm of B-Movie campness with a penis monster and prosthetic limbs being pulled off. It's pretty much what I imagine the punk rock version of Romeo and Juliet being. I wonder if it was a response to Baz Luhrmann's version. Lloyd Kaufman has said in his book that he considers this to be the second best adaptation after Zefferelli's film. Honestly I would rather watch this than Romeo + Juliet, but we are comparing apples to oranges. However, if you want to watch a Romeo and Juliet film avoid the BBC Version it's indescribably dull, but authentic to its source material. Unlike most Troma films the soundtrack is also decent on this one with the use of some licensed music (Unsane, Motörhead, Ass Ponys).

Be warned though, the UK VHS and DVD is rated 18 and the US uncut version is unrated, This features some gore and a lot of sexual content, albeit played for laughs. The US DVD features a great print as did the UK VHS tape (and clean stereo sound) I used to own.

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I didn't rate this as high as the first Police Story film. Some fans do prefer this over the prequel. The film starts off with a montage of clips from the first film and we learn Jackie Chan has been demoted to a traffic cop for causing chaos. Eventually he works his way up to being something like an undercover agent. Meanwhile the bad boss from the first film harasses him with violent pranks.

This film features more of Jackie Chan's slapstick humour than the first film, but it is much darker in tone than most of his films with a fairly nasty torture scene involving "Thunder Bangs" and a fairly downbeat ending. The stunts are absolutely amazing and also dangerous. Jackie Chan on top of a double decker bus jumping through a sugar glass window gets talked about a lot (the sugar glass used was thicker than on most films and caused the cast to get cut much like the first film), the use of fireworks and a stunning fight in a cafe were everything gets smashed-up.

I think this isn't in the same league as the first film, but it is still a must see HK action movie fans. It is much more plot heavy than the first film and less action packed. At around 2 hours long it outstays it welcome by about 20 minutes.

Both the UK and US Blu-Ray feature the same print and it's as good as it gets. Really nice 5.1 sound, unfortunately the English Dub is really badly out of sync and no commentary tracks.

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Absolutely incredible action film from Jackie Chan. In recent years Jackie has become better known for his goofy action comedies like Wheels on Meals, The Tuxedo and Rush Hour this is serious by comparison.

Many commonly used action film techniques were copied from this film, the use of slow motion during action sequences to show off the stunts - unfortunately I think the tedious bullet time was an indirect result of this film, out-takes in end credit sequences (?), non-sequiter action sequences like answering the phones in the police station and the use of faster, more dangerous stunts as the spectacle rather than the plot that we see today in films like The Transporter. There are some stunts which would never get the green light in Hollywood even in the 80s; people going head-first through glass windows, a car chase through a shanty town with the buildings exploding, a motorbike scene in the mall (possibly a homage to Bruce Lee in Game of Death).

What separates this from other Hong Kong action films is there is genuine characterisation and a plot beyond "bad guys getting knocked about" and action sequences that are still striking today can the same be said for a later action film like Under Seige? The Mike Myers tribute scene is worth the watch alone.

The Blu-Ray features a superb print, but maybe looks a bit bleached out in places, but I think this is due to 80s film stock more than anything. The Cantonese soundtrack is nice with loud balanced levels, but the English Dub sounds awful with wimpy gunshots. Also the Bey Logan audio commentary is missing as well.

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I think a lot of people miss the point of Stephen King, "He wrote The Shawshank Redemption, Stand By Me (The Body), Misery, but he puts out a lot of trash". To be honest for someone so prolific you can't expect everything to be a great work of art and more to the point he gives his fans what they want.

Misery is of course one of the jewels in his crown. Very much a reworking of What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? which is never a bad thing. It is fondly regarded for a great performance by Kathy Bates who manages to ham it up much like Joan Crawford while still being scary and controlling. You totally believe Kathy Bates is strong enough to lift up James Caan in the snow. James Caan gives a victim performance, pretty much an Achilles Legs character, who gets played at every stage. A great contrast compared to his slick, gangster role in the excellent Thief. Another feature that elevates this against the mass of psychothrillers in the 90s is some stunning photography of the "great outdoors" of Colorado.

The film toes the line between camp and genuine shocks, due to good pacing by Rob Reiner and the acting (special mention to Richard Farnsworth's lovable sheriff). The film has a really good humour to it with James Caan's Paul Sheldon character clearly modelled on King's own experiences with obsessive fans, but turned up to an absurd level.

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Cute 'n' cuddly comedy that provided the inspiration for the TV series "Bewitched" more than two decades later. Veronica Lake is just gorgeous and her comic timing is also a treat. Snuggle up with this one & Arsenic and Old Lace while waiting for Halloween night to arrive.

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Takes a good concept and does absolutely nothing with it. This film came out when Super Hero movies really started to become big box office draws again after the success of the X-Men franchise (2000 onwards), Spider-Man (2002 onwards) and Batman Begins and Fantastic Four (2005).

This film is more in the camp territory clearly inspired by Supergirl as well as Saturday morning cartoons like the Spider-Man animated series and Looney Tunes. What you end up with is really corny groan worthy action sequences like bank robbers having their guns bent. The other plot is sort of an alternative on a Rom-Com where Uma Thurman starts dating Luke Wilson and she basically becomes a psycho bitch. Then you get treated to such comedy gems as the bed breaking when they have sex because she's so strong.

Ivan Reitman has directed much loved comedy films from the 80s and 90s. This film I just found really annoying and crass, don't get me wrong when it comes to crass humour I like films by John Waters and the Farelly Brothers, but at least they are clever and original with it.

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Absolutely awful film. I liked the first Meatballs mainly due to Bill Murray and an exciting race scene. This one is total rubbish, only had a limited cinema release which says it all. I had a laugh at the young man who had to wear a neck brace due to trying to auto fellate himself, other than that very unfunny. It's a cliched Jocks vs Nerds film about teenagers losing their virginity. I saw this late night on Channel 5 (now called Five) in the UK.

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Mercy!

Hollywood really DOES do propaganda better than enemies of the state. Good propaganda commands some respect for its clever use of sound and vision to manipulate the subject at hand. Some of my favorite films belong to this category due to their creative license with reality during the WWII era. Runaway Jury left me embarrassed for the filmmakers (hell, for the film industry!) because they do the genre such a disservice. A small town community theater could make a more convincing case for any given topic, political or otherwise.

The screenplay is the nucleus of the problem, beginning with changing the subject of John Grisham's original novel from a legal battle with the tobacco industry to a favorite Hollywood screed, the gun industry. The film is sold as a smart courtroom drama / thriller, but rather than impressing the viewers with facts and stats from either side to make their respective legal cases, the script bypasses all of those pesky details in favor of pure emotion. As Dustin Hoffman recites his closing arguments against the gun lobby to the jury, sentimental music stirs the heart strings valiantly, but when the defendant's legal rep, played by Bruce Davison, delivers his closing statement, the music turns dark and eerie. Charming.

Then there's the technology. Gene Hackman portrays a shady jury consultant who employs a crack team of high-tech engineers using state-of-the-art surveillance gadgetry, quite a bit far-fetched in all but spy cinema. Our superhero, everyman Nick Easter (John Cusack) also possesses savvy skills in order to manipulate his way into the jury pool of his choice, and the psychological people skills necessary to swing a jury at the drop of a hat. Just some of the paper thin sketches of anything resembling plausibility.

The film's final message: Manipulating juries is fine if you happen to support the noble good guys who are doing battle against dastardly, evil corporate thugs with thick Southern accents who tie girls up and put them on railroad tracks in between enabling killers to go on shooting rampages. (catches breath) And just in case you STILL miss that message, feast your eyes on Cusack and Rachel Weisz as they celebrate their victory by going to an urban playground and watching young children play (largely ethnic, naturally), gazing into each other's eyes knowing that they have protected the next generation of innocents from those money-hungry villains.

Few things are as compelling as a good legal drama -- and I wanted so much for this to be just that, I really wanted to love Runaway Jury. I felt cheated and deceived into watching what appeared to be a courtroom thriller. There was little courtroom -- and those scenes had the tension of the finale in a rom-com. The majority of Runaway Jury focused on its agenda, a poison pen letter to the gun lobby. Political theater is hard enough to avoid, so having it sneak its ugly self in like a trojan horse was the last straw(man).

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Breach is a highly stylized representation of a short period in the life and crimes of Robert Hanssen, senior FBI agent and one of the worst traitors in U.S. intelligence history. In comparison to the previously filmed treatment of the story, the 2002 TV movie Master Spy: The Robert Hanssen Story, that earlier film unfolded in a realistic, visually muted manner, taking the time to examine all of the characters and their motivations. It was believable and convincing because the shock of a man turning on his country and duty was not embellished for the thrill factor, nor were any of the principals exagerrated caricatures enhanced for dramatic effect. The viewers of Breach get betrayed with popcorn-movie mechanics in favor of the real story, which is less exciting. Dark, gloomy lighting pre-empts the way most rooms and locations are really lit so that it builds intensity in otherwise bland environments; sadly, the same trick is played with characters and events as opposed to the real story.

In fairness, Breach only covers two months prior to Hanssen's arrest and some events are paraphrased into that narrow timeline. Further, there's the old pace issue in which producers strip away details in order to advance the story in a timely manner. That said, no attempt is made to see any part of Hanssen's personality aside from a lurid, enigmatic bad guy. An easy-to-hate villain italicized by some quirky issues that make his manner erratic and intimidating. I'm OK with conversations being invented to better sell the story and motives, but when the whole film is spit & polished for the sake of high audience score cards, it loses cred. There's a number of plot holes that also create a credibility gap, such as Hanssen's judgment, which spoil the depiction of him as a "master spy". On the other hand, there is indeed a great deal of accuracy that was scrupulously recreated, from locations such as FBI offices to involvement from the real life Eric O'Neill, who served as a consultant. It's not as if the film is a deception, just that the process overrides the real story.

The cast and crew are top shelf, particularly the lens work of Tak Fujimoto (Gladiator, The Silence of the Lambs). Billy Ray, a screenwriter by trade, is skillful and proves he can helm a project (this being the second of three films he's directed.) Chris Cooper delivers his usual fine work and carries the film with adequate support from Ryan Phillippe as his colleague. Although I like Laura Linney, her performance is a bit postured, overplayed and smug, I never believed she was a high-ranking handler for the FBI. The presence of Gary Cole and Dennis Haysbert bring needed charisma to the bleak proceedings.

Cooper's portrayal of Hanssen is depicted as more methodical than vulnerable, as we never learn the motivation behind his breach. Political and religious cheap shots are peppered in early on, Hanssen's faith routinely shown in a laughable extreme, and every other slight eccentricity enlarged the way a slasher film might detail the traits of its killer. Those aspects are not pronounced with the same animous in the 2002 film, which was painstakingly penned by Norman Mailer.

As a piece of entertainment with some historical value, Breach pushes all the right cinematic buttons, albeit at a slower speed limit than action fans weaned on Bourne films will have the patience for. If the story fascinates you at all, I would recommend the earlier film for a more complete version of a story that needs more than two months to represent and less attention paid to pacing to make its case.

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Despite the furore of the sacrilege of having rebooted the Ghostbusters t-shirt and mug business, this is actually a very entertaining film in it's own right.

The fact that it was almost deliberately shunned and has gone the short route through to TV to recoup losses makes me predict it will probably get repeated showings, and more people will watch it over time, and conclude, in spite of what they expected (wanted to expect), it's a very good, funny movie that is generally liked,

Perhaps the only real downside is that they tried to show too much reverence for the original Ghostbusters... constantly offering slavish nods to it - obviously in a vain attempt to appease them that could not be appeased.

But the response means that this franchise is a dead duck, and now.... they are rebooting it again!!!!

This new coming one looks more like a hazy romanticized JJ Abrams style Spielberg nostalgia kick... like Stand By Me meets Goonies with comedy ghosts, and more of a sequel to the original Ghostbusters films, judging by the trailer.

But, wait and see though, I suppose.

...just a shame they didn't have more courage to go with this incarnation, and let them do entirely their own thing with it.

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