Retraite mortelle

Mickey King is a jobbing writer, spitting out lurid gangster novels under various fake names with the usual mix of violence and sex making them sell. He is approached to ghost write for an unnamed Hollywood "legend" and, pocketing a nice advance for his troubles, he agrees. He travels by coach to meet his subject and meets several strange characters along the way. One of them ends up dead and King steps into the background to let the police find the body but keep himself out of it – however when the body seemingly disappears he is at a loss to explain it and unable to report it.

A misfire this one but one that does have some reasonable ideas within it. The gimmick of king's narration versus what is happening and the simple view of his books versus the complex unfairness of reality is a nice idea but it does not translate into a good film. Those that really like the film (both of them) claim that this is not given enough credit because the majority of viewers don't "get" it but I beg to differ – I think it is rating "average" and remembered as such because of the film itself being just that – average. The gimmick wears thin when you realise that there is nothing else than a poorly delivered mystery. Towards the end there are themes and things of interest that vaguely start to drift out but by then it is too little too late. Comparing it to things like Chinatown is a joke and those that have suggested this have offered nothing by way of justification.

The cast are mixed. Caine plays to play into his character and indeed he does get some moments of interest with his essentially harmless character, but as the material thins so does his performance. Rooney is interesting for playing an unusual character but offers little more than novelty value. The rest of the cast fill in around the edges in strange turns here and there. Malta as a setting is filmed with a real lack of interest and comes over as dry and colourless – a visual impression that does not help the material one little bit.

Overall then an OK idea falls flat as it brings nothing else of interest to the room. Caine tires of it long before the end so it should be of no surprise if you the viewer do as well.

I was an extra in this film.. We had an hilarious time in Malta and the whole cast was great fun.. (I'm the blonde girl - tallest of them all - in the scene when they check in at the hotel..

The whole film team was living at a hotel called the PRELUNA in Malta - fantastic place still. and someone managed to use a euro-plug in the British style sockets and short-circuited the whole hotel.. Everyone pretended not to know who!!

The plot is weak but Rooney was great and Michael Caine is and will always be just Michael Caine.. He is good.. It's a pity you can't see this film on TV any more.. I have a real OLD video copy,.,,

Great film that doesn't take itself too seriously. For me, the parts played by Dennis Price and Lionel Stander kind of steal the show. Narrated in the first person throughout, if I remember rightly, I guess it could also have been called "An Innocent Abroad" or something similar, as Micheal Caine finds himself "up against it" and completely out of his depth in comfortable surroundings he feels uncomfortable in as violence hovers just beneath the surface. So, for those reasons it's a bit like "Get Carter", only this time around there's no personal crusade he's on; he's just a writer of pulp fiction out for what he can get from an ageing Hollywood actor (played by Mickey Rooney) who wants him to ghost-write his autobiography. I suppose this film is a bit like "Chinatown" in some respects as it deals with the futility of attempting to tackle corruption on a grand scale - only unlike the Polanski movie, it never won any awards because it never really took itself too seriously. How can one take Caine as a tough, gritty Londoner, when he swans around Malta in a white suite and sunglasses - smoking through a cigarette holder like a Cockney Noel Coward?

Mike Hodges' GET CARTER (1971) is, supposedly, a realistic gangster flick about a hit man, played by Michael Caine, who murders without demur and, indiscriminately, screws every bird in sight; yet, wells up at the thought that - is it his niece? - has been snatched up by a porno-movie ring. He systematically knocks off mob kingpins and we are invited to watch him do it - with cold-blooded relish.

PULP is gangster related too, but pure Lewis Carroll in narrative plausibility; nevertheless, Caine's Mickey King is amusingly credible in the manner in which he drinks in the dream world that happens to him.

PULP pulls off something that few films (including SUNSET BLVD., with the marvelous William Holden) are able to do. It makes an author its central character and you believe, from start to finish, that he is, in fact, a man of curiosity and invention, who makes his living by the employment of words.

Among Hodges' other films, CROUPIER (1998) is closer to PULP than GET CARTER is because its protagonist's literary pretensions resemble King's habit of describing a shady milieu which operates in moral twilight. Both pictures suffer from direction too tightly melded to intriguing fictional conceits. However, the phlegmatic understatement of Caine's voice-over commentary (written by Hodges) is maintained impressively, the Malta locations and surprising russet colors - not to mention the freak-show supporting cast of Mickey Rooney, Lionel Stander, Lizabeth Scott, Dennis Price, Nadia Cassini's mile-long legs and, Bogart look-a-like, Robert Sacchi make it a must for connoisseurs of the truly offbeat.

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One reviewer suggested that "Pulp" never became a box-office hit because it can't be easily classified into a genre. That's certainly a legitimate way of explaining it. Another explanation could be that it's just not a very good movie. It wants to be a mystery, but the plot never grips you like it should; it wants to be a comedy, but the laughs are not as frequent as they should be (one great line, though: after trying to watch a film that is projected upside down, a guy says "This would be a big hit in Australia!"); it wants to "say something" about the thin line separating reality from fiction, but that "something" doesn't come through very clearly. Michael Caine gives a sly performance, full of his typical cool bemusement, and he just about manages to get you through the film (with some help from the pleasant Malta locations and Nadia Cassini's long legs). Near the end, there is a scene on a deserted beach that may remind you of the finale of "Get Carter". That's not a good thing, however, as you may find yourself wishing you were (re-)watching that film instead of this one. (**)