twentystcenturychristian

This slow, lumbering film struggles to tell the story of possibly the most important man and time in Scotland's history. The storytelling is difficult to follow and made worse by long, boring minutes when nothing happens and you're so distracted that you forget to pay attention.

You have to feel sorry for the actors and wonder if even they knew what das happening. It feels like a 45 minute short has been padded with pointlessly long scenes that exist just carry you to the next (slim) thread of the story.

Your finger will be hovering between fast-forward and stop and you try to decide whether to prolong the suffering to see if anything will happen, or whether to just to write it off as a tedious waste of time.

If you just want to see a special fx show reel, go ahead and watch this. If you want a film with any kind of a story or depth, maybe skip this because that seems to be the place where they lost the plot - the skip (dumpster in the US).

Even the fx set pieces lack any real credibility. You'll find yourself just saying, "nah, couldn't happen" over and over again.

Definitely one of those films to be filed under the category of "life's too short".

Possibly one of Hitch's worst films. It lacks any of his usual sense of suspense or thrill. Instead Paul Newman and Julie Andrews struggle with a poor script and a story that just drags boringly on. The dialogue often sounds fake with the actors saying lines to each other that just don't have a ring or truth about them.

The "action" sequences don't improve things, in fact some of them succeed in being funny almost as though Mel Brooks had been hired to spoof those scenes.

Unless you knew otherwise, you'd swear this had been made by a completely different and slightly incompetent director.

As a keen Hitchcock fan, I was left feeling let down and disappointed.