Zona d'ombra

The English do it so well. No thousand-bullet shoot outs (that almost all miss the target), no silly car chase, no pseudo- moralistic theme that the bad guys suffer and righteousness will prevail. Just a plausible story, superb acting, and great directing and production.

A corrupt security official (Fox) knows when the truck will leave and who else knows the codes. He also knows Haskell (Caine), an evil and unscrupulous career crook. They scheme to hijack the truck that has tons of special bank-note paper.

Enter an unlovely schoolboy (in his one and only movie credit). He hinders but strangely also helps the heist. There are other awful schoolboys who are part of the twists and turns of the story.

A radio black-out is organised, they divert the truck to a lonely road. There are a few casualties along the way, and eventually just one bullet, and one car explosion. Fitting!

There are good performances from support cast including Tim Healy and Rupert Frazer. OK, so it's not perfect, there is a strange, unexplained scene where the boy controls a cage on a construction site and Haskell conveniently goes inside it. A minor detail.

It took quite a while before I could figure out all of the pieces of this scheme and the people involved which I enjoy. I don't like to know everything within the first ten minutes. Caine plays a crook and somehow manages to get a local schoolboy involved in his scheme. Or the schoolboy decides to help Caine with his crime. Caine is a great actor. He is very believable as always. Good dialogue and other actors were very good (Caine's callgirl, School Headmaster and Professor). There aren't any hum-drum moments in this film. The excitement/suspense slowly keeps building up scene after scene. The gigantic church on the outskirts of town becomes the focal point of the heist becoming a success and at the last minute they have to shake it down so their plan won't fail. There's a lot of suspense and tense moments. Caine winds up being too ruthless for my tastes and the ending kind of fell short for me. But it's worth a look.

This really wouldn't look out of place as a student film. Leaden script, poor acting and a plot that never really gets going are just a few of the things that can be said. Caine is OK, but you get the feeling that the rest of the cast just don't care. In fact with better production values and a little more believable action this film could have been at least half-way decent. In the mid- to late-sixties there may have been a call for this type of film but not now. Then, it would have been slightly dangerous and risque, perhaps even exciting (then again perhaps not). Now it collects dust as it sits on the shelves of the local video outlet (really - it does!). The film is just a shadow of what could have been.

This film is a poor example of how bad British Film-making can be. This was given to me free with my DVD player and it is the biggest waste of money I have never spent in my life. It looks like it was made in the 1980's and imagine my disbelief when I found out it was it was only filmed in 1998. I do despair that people willingly parted with their money to fund this dire waste of film stock. It is an embarrassment to all those people involved in the making, funding, acting and the viewing public.

The only good thing about this film is that the DVD does make a fantastic coaster.

Please, if I only do one right thing in my life, it should be to warn you. Do not watch this film.

i picked this up in a charity shop, one of them freebie CD's that you occasionally find - this one was part of the 'Michael Caine Collection' given away with some British newspaper once. Anyway i have spent all week watching the 1988 adaptation of 'Jack The Ripper' starring MC, so thought i would follow it up with this...

in defence of this movie, the plot is a bit daft, i agree, but it is a great experience to see Leslie Grantham and Caine acting for large periods of time in the same scenes. I also thought that the addition of that guy who plays the General in the Star Wars movies IV-VI was good too, as he is a largely underused actor, in my opinion.

so whilst i possibly agree the film is weak, the chance to see a few quality British actors together on camera is worth it. I also find it quite surprising that a big time actor like Caine would get caught up in such a trivial movie filmed in the UK. There was a reason for the Ripper TV movie, as it was a semi-investigative journalist type film to 'commemorate' (not sure if that is the best phrase to use) the 100 years since Jack The Ripper.

Read earlier here that someone wanted to know whether public schools like that exist. Well i studied music at a pre-1992 UK university and believe me - staff like that depicted in this film DO exist.