Dirty Weekend

I only saw this as I was writing a review for a college magazine at the time and thought it would be easier to write about a bad movie than a good one. I didn't realise just how easy it wou ld be. I saw it on a wet afternoon in a mutliplex, and 4 of the 6 people in the cinema walked out. I wish I was one. Awful in every possible respect, if Edison had known that this would happen to his great invention he would have hid the patent. Not out of curiosity, masochism or desperation should you give this a look.

Dirty weekend is a very well made film- as you would expect from Michael Winner. To sum it up, it is basically a feminist version of Death Wish about a woman who gets pushed around, experiences her own powerlessness and one day decides she's had enough. Needless to say that she then spends a weekend with a gun meeting a lot of creeps. Some of ther performances are great. David McCallum as psyohopathic dentist alone is worth watching the film. As always Winner plays effectively with audience by getting us to actually want her to pull the trigger. Of course, it is all black/and white in terms of morals and the likelihood of meeting such an assortment of scumbags in one weekend is not really that big. But all in all the film is well made. What impressed me most was the very effective use of music in the film. I found it remarkable that the French film "Baise Moi" allegedly a feminist masterpiece is a shameless rip off of Dirty Weekend, lifting complete scenbes from Winner's film.

There is a bad and good side to this film. Bad because of the detail i.e the lingering expressionless looks of Bella gets a bit over done and you're not sure what these mean in relation to the film sometimes. All the 'nasty' male characters she encounters are too obviously the entire(minority) arseholes of the male population...which in turn makes what happens the good side of the film.

Good because of the age old formula of the victim getting revenge on the bad guys is female . Even though it's all a little bit silly & OTT it's worth a watch if even just for the nasty bits. Is Bella tipped over the edge or just coolly enjoying her sadistic pursuits now? You decide...

I saw this movie years ago, when it first came out in the theater. My boyfriend at the time thought it would be a sexually charged thriller as the title suggests, a "Basic Instinct" of sorts. Boy was he in for a surprise! This woman has been hit on, molested and generally pushed around be every creepy guy she comes in contact with, including her dentist. Finally, she has enough of all these idiot men she comes in contact with and starts brutally killing them off. I did enjoy watching this, but part of the reason may have been watching my boyfriend squirm throughout the entire film. I think this film will definitely send a message out loud and clear--Guys, behave yourselves, or else!

It's difficult to know if Dirty Weekend finds Michael Winner taking the rise out the urine, or if he genuinely feels he had something to say? And what of Helen Zahavi, author of the novel and in charge of the adaptation to screen here? What's her story - motivations et al? It's quite possibly that Helen and Michael at their respective humane cores were a match made in cinematic heaven, but how come Dirty Weekend just feels dirty, lazy dirty at that, a sort of shock for shocks sake as Zahavi gets to curry favour with the feminist movement and Winner gets to be seedy, with murder death kill and the grotesque thrown in for good measure.

Plot, for what it's worth, has dowdy Bella (Lia Williams) suddenly turn into a sexual vamp over night with a blood lust for offing all men who dare to leer and pester. In Brighton, the place of rock, candy floss and degenerate male members of the human race.

It would have been easy to root for Bella had she at the very least had acquaintances or drinks with some normal men, but it's hard to take seriously a film where every single bloke she meets is either troubled mentally, a sexually deviant, has a penchant for serial killing and etc etc. Even her best friend's husband is a milquetoast who probably should have been on Bella's hit list as well!

Winner achieved everything he hoped for with Dirty Weekend, the critics frothed at the mouth, the British censors sharpened their scissors, and crucially the film became a holy grail of uncut home formats for the intrigued and degenerates. It undeniably was shocking back on release, I mean when the broad sheet newspapers of Blighty are dissecting it frame by frame you know it's a fire-cracker piece of cinema.

Rufus Sewell can be forgiven as this is right at the start of his career (he is edgy, nutty and Anthony Perkins like), same for British legend Sean Pertwee, but what is David McCallum's excuse, Ian Richardson also? That Lia Williams is bold and cheeky with her performance saves the film from stinker hell, it's great to note that she carved out a strong career in British TV and still works today.

Hard to recommend and guaranteed to make you angry, but fair play to Winner, boy did he know how to punch buttons! 5/10