Ordinary Decent Criminal 1/2
Rated on a 4-star scale Screening venue: Odeon (Liverpool City Centre) Released in the UK by Icon Entertainment International on March 17, 2000; certificate 15; 93 minutes; country of origin Ireland/USA; aspect ratio 2.35:1
Directed by Thaddeus O'Sullivan; produced by Jonathan Cavendish. Written by Gerard Stembridge. Photographed by Andrew Dunn; edited by William Anderson.
CAST..... Kevin Spacey..... Michael Lynch Linda Fiorentino..... Christine Lynch Helen Baxendale..... Lisa Peter Mullan..... Michael's Buddy Stephen Dillane..... Detective
"Ordinary Decent Criminal" is what happens, I suppose, when a few hundred actors gain access to photographic equipment and drugs. Is there another explanation for the film's existence? Could serious businessman and artists have conceived, written, financed and produced it? Mybe some anti-social scumbag in the film industry decided he needed to create something grotesque to release on St. Patrick's Day weekend, so that the few people in the country without hangovers would be suffering ordeals too.
This movie is technically and artistically inept. Shots are set up from arbitrary angles, meaning there is no rhythm to the cuts between them. Most of the transitions are slightly jarring anyway, as in some cheap 1970s porn film. The music seems to be from one of those flicks, too, on a soundtrack that doesn't match the picture properly; the timing of the lip-synching is off, and all the sound effects are at the same volume, which sounds creepy.
It doesn't help that the actors speak with phoney voices. The cast is headed by two Americans, Kevin Spacey and Linda Fiorentino, and they are joined by British actors Helen Baxendale and Peter Mullan. All try and fail to put on Irish accents, and since most of the cast is made up of foreigners with the same problem, our ears can hardly bear it. Did it never occur to the filmmaker, Thaddeus O'Sullivan, that plenty of available actors are native to Eire?
Some of them can be seen in John Boorman's film "The General", which was released to acclaim in 1996, and followed the legendary career of a real-life criminal named Martin Cahill. "Ordinary Decent Criminal" borrows from the same story, which didn't need to be told again, especially not in this dumb way. The character, renamed Michael Lynch and played by Spacey, is shown as a loveably crafty and confident rogue, who is always outsmarting incompetent police with such hilarious tactics as kidnapping and car bombs. Ho, ho, ho, what fun!
Spacey is expected to win an Oscar next Sunday for his performance in "American Beauty", the tragi-comic story of a suburban loser's search for happiness. Obviously the great actor isn't having a hard time finding challenging material. So why did he agree to star in "Ordinary Decent Criminal"? It's the kind of film you stare at in appalled silence, amazed that your local cinema would actually book it. It's impossible to write a satisfactory review of the experience. Please accept this fragmented list of gripes.
COPYRIGHT(c) 2000 Ian Waldron-Mantgani http://members.aol.com/ukcritic
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews