Andy - Cardiff

'Get Carter' has Michael Caine at his best. He plays the vicious cockney gangster to perfection. I ended up sympathizing with his quest to expose the sordid and seedy goings on which led to the death of his brother in Newcastle.

The harshness, squalor, meanness and sheer indifference to fellow humanity of all the characters is perfectly put across by Hodges. And the ending is one of the greatest in cinema history.

'Waking Ned' is made very much in the style of old Ealing comedies and thematically is very similar to 'Whiskey Galore'. Like Mackendrick's film we are presented with an isolated and traditional community who depend on fishing and farming for their sustenance. The themes in the film are, firstly of 'little people' versus authority, namely the National Lottery whom they must deceive to fraudulently claim the dead villager's winnings.And secondly the kindred versus malevolent spirits, such as the unpleasant and reclusive Lizzy Quinn who would shop the community to get 10 per cent of the winnings and put them all in jail and out of sight.

The performances, particularly Ian Bannen, are good but somehow the film is too superficial to be a great film like 'Whiskey Galore'. It would be fair to describe 'Waking Ned' as an 'Ealing' film, in that it attempts to convey strongly the idea of 'community' which was typical of post-war Ealing movies i.e. 'Passport to Pimlico', 'Whiskey Galore' etc. However while those Ealing movies reflected many of the ideas and cultural perceptions of community in a Britain which had just gone through the Second World War, 'Waking Ned' projects a mythical Irish 'innocence'. In modern Ireland (or reality) a dead body would be taken to a coroner (as in most civilized countries) who would verify the cause of death, the body would not be left to the villagers or simply be recorded on the parish register. Perhaps, I should suspend my disbelief, but I feel that in doing so I am acquiescing to a patronising and rose tinted view of Ireland. It seems that while New Labour is desperately striving to cultivate an ideology of community in an uncertain Britain, Ireland becomes, in film at least, a backdrop for idealised fantasies about dying communities struggling to stay alive in a harsh and indifferent world.

An enjoyable, entertaining and highly stylised romp through London gang violence by Guy Ritchie. The film is brilliantly edited, however the use of third person narration and sequential edits is derivative of 'Trainspotting' (which is a much better film). The lighting is effectively sparse and effectively conveys the drabness and tawdriness of the characters and subject matter.

After watching this film I do not feel particularly bothered about ever seeing it again. It is certainly an overrated film and comes nowhere near classic British crime films like 'Get Carter' and 'The Long Good Friday'. The high ratings given to this film is because of it's current trendiness rather than it's overall cinematic quality. In Britain, the TV spin-off, not directed by Ritchie, 'Lock Stock..' was absolutely atrocious and was quite rightly panned by critics. Some of the other user comments saying that this film is better than American crime movies is palpable rubbish, this cannot compete with 'Goodfellas', 'The Godfather', 'The Sopranos', 'Reservoir Dogs' etc.

In conclusion, this is a good little film but not a great one and time will be the judge of that.