What starts out as a really excellent pitch-black comedy about a production of "Julius Caesar" gone murderously wrong loses the thread about halfway through.
For the first half it was incredibly well made and cruising to be a particular favorite, but about halfway through the tight plotting suddenly gets very, very flabby, and instead of exploring the consequences of a murder they fall back on the "comedy" of the bodies piling up as many more happen.
It's a true shame. The production is excellent, whole thing is surprisingly strong, and even the acting holds up all the way through, with the exception of the appearance halfway through as Malcolm McDowell, playing his usual role of Malcolm-McDowell-in-costume-as-someone-else. The actors seemed incredibly true-to-life, based solely my meager experience with theater actors. I'm guessing this really is aimed as a satire at people who've been involved in the theater, but it was still so well done that I didn't have a hard time enjoying it too.
But the writing, which is so promising for the first half, just suddenly goes from darkly comic to a little too contrived and ludicrous to be believed, and finally becomes flat-out predictable by the very end.
This has a ton of 10-star ratings on IMDB and 100% on Rotten Tomatoes, I would guess entirely from people who've been involved in theater. I mean, much about it is unusually good. I do get that. It would have been an honorable mention if it had help up, so much about it is so good. But the way the story suddenly shifts halfway through from considerably fun and engrossing to predictable and thin just knocks it down from something really excellent to well, just not quite as enjoyable by the time it all wraps up. Still, despite the problems that knocked it down, this is among the top of the heap for my "Je nais se quois" category. I didn't expect a Lou Diamond Phillips movie to be so well done.
See all movie reviews...
