faustian_jargon

This film has haunted me for years since I caught it on late night TV,. Flms from this part of the world are often profoundly bleak and honest, often brutally so. This type of film-making is the antithesis of the generic, posturing American fluff we've all become accustomed to and is comparable to Tarkovsky as his best; as opposed to Soderbergh at his worst.

I have recently been fortunate to meet a Russian friend who gets me these films and these have again and again stirred up the emotions triggered by this, my first Russian-style masterpiece. The story is simple and is summed up neatly above, but words only serve to cheapen the insight and craft of such a masterful work, if you need plot-padding like token twists and such, you'd do best to avoid this.

In closing let me say: get it, steal it, do whatever you can to let this film into your heart.

If you appreciate terrible set-design, bad lighting, gruesome effects, awful casting and incongruous overstated music.... This film is for you! The ONLY redeeming feature of this film is Gary Oldman (as mentioned ad-nauseam by all the other reviewers). This is a lame story, with some appalling acting thanks mostly to the casting. Keanu Reeves seldom is anything but wooden (with the delightful exception of his role in The Gift - where he aptly played a redneck) but with the addition of an English accent we now have a wooden Reeves alloyed with an out-of-his-depths Depp in 'From Hell' - a similarly dodgy slock- horror thing. If you appreciated the realism and grit of Coppola's Apocalypse Now, you'll hate this as I did. Everything that was awesome about that film is conspicuously absent in this one. In closing I will add the obvious - I am very disappointed and I want that two hours of my life back!

This is a remake in every sense of the word. ie: they took a perfectly good film and made it again. This film is a cover not a remix and one where all members of the band lack the charisma and talent of the original. The original film is a heist movie about a millionaire industrialist type who runs a very tight art-theft operation, purely for his own enjoyment. The interesting bits are when an insurance investigator is set on him and they spar over the ethics of the "caper, sir". It's light on the surface, but has depth if you care to pay attention. They soundtrack also tells a story and syncs beautifully with the scenes in the film - like the game of chess between the two apparent adversaries and the song "His eyes, Her eyes". The chess game is one of the many innuendos of predator and prey, outwitting and seducing at the same time. The remake fails dismally because it lamely attempts to reproduce the soundtrack and casts the leads as caricatures of Steve and Faye - even down to a terrible impersonation by Pierce Brosnan of Steve's laugh which is so awful both my wife and I hit the floor in hysterics. The dodgy "brand new" sounding 'smooth jazz' sax in the soundtrack is simply awful, any sax player knows you have to go dig a horn out of the fifties if you want the best sound, this film is almost a like one of those dodgy Star Wars spoofs over at ifilm, simply laughable. 1/10.