Shadow Run

According to Adam Ant 'Ridicule is nothing to be scared of...'so I'm unapologetically bigging up the fallaciously forgotten, unfairly misbegotten Michael Caine 90s heist flick 'Shadow Run' (1998). While this competently made crime potboiler has a serviceable plot, and attractive scenery, 'Shadow Run' is manifestly all about Sir Michael Caine's renowned prowess for creating indelibly fascinating rogues, and alongside the inimitable 'Caine', there's an equally 'able' cast!!!!??? Namely, James Fox, Kenneth Colley, Christopher Casenove, Tim Healey, and some especially enjoyable work from TV hero Leslie Grantham who has a palpable screen chemistry with the iconic Caine.

Happily, 'Shadow Run' proved to be far more eccentric in its execution than I could ever have hoped for, and while an aloof James Fox never fully engages with the pulpy material, a stern, darkly energized Michael Caine is magisterially menacing as the sadistic strangler Haskell, and 'Shadow Run' arguably contains the finest 'Thematically apropos pointing with a mustard-tipped sausage' acting that I have ever seen! Meaty stuff indeed!!!! While many seem overly hung up on the modest budget and formulaic text, I relished the wonderfully unexpected whimsicality therein, with Geoffrey Reeve's 'Shadow Run' frequently playing out like a glossier, feature-length episode of 'Dempsey and Makepeace', incongruently intertwined with a bizarrely retrograde Billy Bunter-esque subplot!!!!?? Another major plus being the scintillatingly perky presence of Rae Baker, who makes for some salaciously snackable screen candy! While this agreeably bucolic, visibly low budget B-thriller is appropriately pacey, Shadow Run's indelible legacy are all of its sublimely plentiful peccadilloes!

We know why Michael Caine would take a roll in a piece of trash like this... This master actor has at least one huge folly. He is panic stricken whenever he is out of work, thinking that he'll never work again...so, he takes anything that comes along when he's finished with his last film. Sometimes it is shear garbage that comes along. It was fun watching the crew's reflections in Sir Michael's sunglasses. Didn't look like there were too many of them either. You sure this wasn't a student film. It sure looked like it. And I don't think they got a passing grade either! Bizarre production financing company too (maybe that's a clue to the cluelessness of it all). Some Industrial company. My guess is they supplied all the construction sites for free.

I picked this up in a charity shop for 50p and still feel robbed. Despite being made in 1998, this feels like a low-budget TV movie from 1980.

The script is terrible. I mean REALLY terrible. None of it makes sense, especially the central premise of the "radio shadow". Communication signals just do not work like that! And don't get me started on the dialogue... The acting is terrible. Even Michael Caine and James Fox cannot elevate this drivel. Everyone else is so bad that it feels like a student film.

The cinematography is terrible. It is painful to watch.

I cannot imagine how Michael Caine was convinced to do this. Did he lose a bet? It really is that bad.

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.

Let's face it, Shadow Run isn't action packed. It's a kind of slow burner that kind of flickers slightly for a while. That said, if you're in the right mood it's okay. Caine is gangster who finds out, via James Fox, that he can get his hands on the paper the Royal Mint use to make bank notes, and starts getting a crew together for a heist. However, he's also having to deal with an unpopular public school boy who witnesses his last heist. The story jumps between Caine getting the heist together, and this boy's bullying at the school. That's, err, basically it. You've got Tim Healy here too, and Leslie Grantham (thankfully nowhere near a webcam!). Things run along smoothly, but there's not real action in it. It's not a bad movie, just a bit bland. Hence the short review.