Mad Dogs and Englishmen

This film is worth seeing simply for its monumental crapness. In the first half an hour alone countless unsympathetic characters are introduced, some of whom proceed to perform random and inexplicable actions throughout. The plot is so disjointed and badly conceived, it requires considerable effort to maintain any idea of what's going on. Not that there's any reason to do so. Instead, viewers should marvel at some appallingly bad dialogue, a staggeringly inept piece of acting from Liz Hurley, and one of the most incomprehensible plotlines I've ever come across in a film. Worth watching, simply because it is SO bad.

I don't usually make a point to watch films this bad (predictable plot, laughable dialog, horrible music soundtrack, etc), but when I saw that my all-time favorite actor Jeremy Brett had a brief but memorable role in "Shameless" (originally titled "Mad Dogs and Englishmen"), I couldn't resist. It's a bizarre experience to witness an actor -- who so perfectly embodied the iconic Sherlock Holmes in the beloved Granada TV series -- appear in such an odd role of a drug-supplying sugar daddy. It's even odder to see a glimpse of him in a modern-day sexual scene with a young woman. Regardless, as usual, he stole the movie even if he was only barely in it. I only wished the director has used Brett to his fullest talents instead of as an aside eccentric.

A young Elizabeth Hurley makes a mediocre attempt to portray a bored little rich girl with drug problems and C. Thomas Howell does his best to seem sexy in a grunge biker kind of way. But Brett's booming voice, subtle expressions and dynamic presence wakes you up for just long enough to pay attention to his character. Once he disappears from the screen, you realize all too soon that the rest of the film is worthless. It takes a great actor to lift up a role from the muck, and I'm sorry to see that this was Brett's only chance to do a modern-day storyline from his usual historic epics before he passed away.

He briefly commented in an interview why he did the role, and soon realized the film was a disaster.

On "Mad Dogs and Englishmen" (1995)-- "I was mad to do it, but I wanted to show the world that I was still alive and I could do other things apart from Sherlock Holmes. I hope they don't release it..."

You keep thinking that the cliches will stop, that someone will show some emotion, that an English word besides 'f...k' will be used to describe something.....but no, no, NO!! You are condemning yourself to a monumental waste of time if you think things will get any better.

The plot is so confusing, and then it becomes not even worth the bother to sort out. Maybe Elisabeth Hurley was playing a stony-faced, no-emotion, no-care druggy; or maybe....she CAN'T ACT!!! Whichever, even the coupling scenes (it would be an insult to call them 'love scenes') are amateurish. You don't even care about the torture scenes. Glad I couldn't recognize Claire Bloom...she was probably glad, herself.

The lighting is haphazard, the dialogue hardly comprehendible. I wasted $10 on this dog....mad, it was not. Boring, it most definitely was.

Mad Dogs starts off well-A police raid of a local drug store, but after the first half an hour, it becomes incredibly boring. It focuses on the romance between a hard ass American biker and a lonely druggy.

No-one really deserves any real recognition for this, but Jock Ackland is probably better than the rest. Elizabeth Hurley is patchy. In some scenes she does well, but in others you wonder why she is such a big success.

Despite a decent beginning and a good ending, this is nothing compared to other British films like Trainspotting, The Full Monty and Face. Rating=2/5

It is a true shame that this piece of garbage was the wonderful Jeremy Brett's last film. obviously he needed money to treat the heart disease that killed him at 60 years old.Mr. Brett tries his best but with a script and direction straight out of amatuer theatricals what could he do?