Helloturia I have absolutely never seen anything like this movie before. You have to see this movie.

Gutsycurene Fanciful, disturbing, and wildly original, it announces the arrival of a fresh, bold voice in American cinema.

Humbersi The first must-see film of the year.

Candida It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

Michael Ledo The film opens with a diamond heist then switches quickly to a cocaine bust. Oh wait. The cocaine bust was just a way for to coerce The Merchant (Gabriel Byrne) to hire the diamond thief (Toby Stephens) by rogue members of Scotland Yard who want to use him for a robbery....I think.The film consists of a confused mess that is hard to follow. The robbery appears to happen right before the cocaine bust, but in one conversation it was "ago." There are people whose brother was killed, dad was killed, and others seeking revenge having motives that pop out with no clarity. There is a long series of double crosses and relationships that are boring. I don't mind watching a film I have trouble keeping up with, but the film has to have some entertaining scenes along the way. This was filled with a long series of boring scenes of people talking, while robberies, killings, and chase scenes are abbreviated.There are far better British "thrillers" out there.Original Title "All Things to All Men."Parental Guide: F-bomb. No sex or nudity.

poetryinmotionpictures A.K.A. The Deadly Game. Now and then you find a film with a great cast and wonder why you've never heard of it before. Here we have Gabriel Byrne, Julian Sands, Toby Stephens and Rufus Sewell in a London gangster thriller.Oh no, not another one!But wait, this is a well produced, well shot film with a pretty good (if somewhat generic) score. And this is only 81 minutes long, so even if it's bad it'll be mercifully short, right?Wrong.I'd been watching 21 minutes when I checked the time, because I thought I must be half way through by now. Groan. So what's wrong with it? Well, the script. The story is completely unintelligible. Which means you feel like you've missed something all the way through, namely, the story. See, the main problem is that we don't know any of the characters in the film, so we don't care about them. Any of them. And there's no clearly definable hero or villain, so you don't know who to root for. And I like grey characters who aren't really good or bad, but you need a general focus or main character in a film, and this film just doesn't have one.So you keep watching these characters you don't care about in a story you can't really figure out, especially as they keep referring to things you don't see but that appear to be germane to the plot, and pretty soon you are just willing it to all end. Drop a plane on them! Nuke the whole city! Just let it end!And then it does, and you are left completely nonplussed, empty, devoid of any reaction other than relief that it's over. That's not the way thrillers are supposed to make you feel. You're supposed to be thrilled! You're supposed to have gone through some kind of cathartic emotional journey, with added visceral excitement. You're not supposed to be relieved the mental cruelty of a badly laid out jigsaw puzzle is finally in your cultural out-box. Phew!I need to watch a great thriller. I might have to go back to my DVD collection.

Sam Berg "All things to all men", a British film about the underworld and the involvement of corrupt police in it. In the end, almost everyone is dead, both the good and the bad, except one novice policeman who captures the sense of the movie. The closing scene brings a rather disjointed and difficult to follow story together with several notable quotes: "There's no right or wrong, only winners and losers." And the closing dialogue: Police Commissioner: "Can you be trusted?" Attorney General: "He means, 'Are you loyal to the system?'" Dickson: "what I don't understand, if a cop doesn't commit perjury, you'll never get a conviction. The undercovers on the street cause more damage than those they're trying to catch. The only way to take a criminal off the streets is to take away all their cash, because if you don't somewhere down the line they're going to buy their way out. Even now, it feels like I'm lying even when I'm telling the truth." Attorney General: "Something like that." Police Commissioner: (with a smile, acknowledging Dickson's desired promotion) "Detective". The closing dialogue constitutes a stinging critique of the "system," the subtle and dangerous symbiotic interplay between the forces of good and evil, and how the line between them in practice is invisible. The British accent made the dialogue extremely difficult to follow at times. The story slowly builds a plot that comes to a satisfying climax with the final denouement.

Nick Stone I cannot recommend this movie. I am a fan of all the lead actors. All play their parts well but in this case, the sum is far less than the parts! It is a very complicated movie and I soon lost my way. If there was a clever plot to keep me entertained then I'm afraid it went over my head. My main criticism is that I was always aware that I was watching a movie. Not once was I drawn into and absorbed by the action. The dialogue was unoriginal and to some extent the overall outcome was quite predictable. Oh, and I hate it when a man suffers severe gunshot wounds but moves around apparently uninjured a few scenes later; the rest of us mere mortals spend a week or two semi-conscious in hospital! Nothing new in this movie; don't waste your money.