Well it's true. This could have been really good. Most of the cast are good actors, the setting and plot were intriguing, the characters interesting and the score was good but for some reason it failed to come together.
A few comments about the good things first - the music over the opening credits was beautiful, really beautiful. The actors' performances were all good, Hans Matheson especially surprised me with how good he was given how bad he'd been in Dr. Zhivago.
The bad things - the plot didn't really hang together, the script was badly written and even the characters that weren't supposed to jabber did at times. It was also unfortunate that there was only one sympathetic character in the whole story and that the characters as a whole were a little underwritten. The directing was a little flat and if you can get Harold Pinter into a film at least use him for more than five minutes.
I like crime films, gangster flicks, those sort of things but this is definitely one not to recommend. Except for the first fifteen minutes which I would watch just for the music over the beginning credits and the appearance of Silver Johnny I would avoid this unless you're a fan of one of the actors since all of them get a decent amount of speaking time.
A few comments about the good things first - the music over the opening credits was beautiful, really beautiful. The actors' performances were all good, Hans Matheson especially surprised me with how good he was given how bad he'd been in Dr. Zhivago.
The bad things - the plot didn't really hang together, the script was badly written and even the characters that weren't supposed to jabber did at times. It was also unfortunate that there was only one sympathetic character in the whole story and that the characters as a whole were a little underwritten. The directing was a little flat and if you can get Harold Pinter into a film at least use him for more than five minutes.
I like crime films, gangster flicks, those sort of things but this is definitely one not to recommend. Except for the first fifteen minutes which I would watch just for the music over the beginning credits and the appearance of Silver Johnny I would avoid this unless you're a fan of one of the actors since all of them get a decent amount of speaking time.