A Monkey movie review

I tend to avoid Jason Statham films because they are usually an hour and a half of him fighting other dudes while shirtless. And I avoid Saffron Burrows movies like the plague because I've had my fill of cheesy movies about giant sea serpents and Volkswagen sized rats who want to enslave us all. But I broke both those rules the other night and I watched this film On Demand:I watched it because it was free and it looked intriguing. And it turned out to be a damn good film. Not great mind you but damn good.

It's about a gal who gets set up by a guy in British intelligence in the early 1970's. She gets set up in order to get her less than reputable friends to pull off a heist at a bank in order to retrieve some unsavory photos of a member of the royal family. It's based on a real story, so one would assume that the photos of Princess Margaret having a threesome with a couple of Caribbean black guys did actually exist.

Saffron's character brings in Statham's character and he brings in crew of his mates to do the heist. During said heist they also steal some pictures of member of parliament in compromising positions who hookers and dominatrices and some other nefarious stuff belonging to members of the London underworld. And when word gets out that these items were stolen all hell breaks loose for Burrows and Statham's gang.

I liked this movie because it was true to the period when it took place, the early '70's, and because it was fast paced and there was not any gratuitous violence in it. Yes, there was some violence in it but it was all germane to the story and it wasn't over the top. Burrows and Statham were both very good in it as well. But the stand out performance was delivered by David Suchet as the venal London gangster who wants his ledgers back. I also loved the performance turned in by Hattie Morahan, who is very hubba hubba by the way. And Keely Hawes, my long time imaginary celebrity British girlfriend, was smashing in her role as Statham's wife.

If you like heist gone wrong and or British gangster films then you'll love this one. I highly recommend it.

Reviews of things past

I love the art of Gustav Klimt, I like most of the acting work done by John Malkovich, and I really like the way Saffron Burrows looks. But none of that was enough to make me like this turkey of movie:
Sweet tiny batter fried and dusted with powdered sugar Jesus this movie is an arty pretentious piece of crap. It assumes we all know the back story of Klimt's life and then it blithely skips around to all kinds of places and locations in time and by the end of the film any goodwill you had towards anyone who made this steaming piece of shit has long gone and you're just about ready to not only murder the writer/director, the actors, and the studio who put it out, you're ready to knee cap the best boy and the on set caterer as well.

Everyone in this film has done far better work elsewhere, I'm sure that true of the multitude of German and Austrian actors who populate this turkey too.

Avoid this at all costs. And if someone insists you watch it, you may want to knock them in the head with a blunt object and terminate your friendship with them forever.

You can read my observations, I can't call it a review since I didn't finish it, of the biography of Jane Goodall I've been reading for the past few weeks by clicking here. Consider yourself lucky I didn't write a post about it that was in any way near as long as the book itself.