Zona d'ombra

This really wouldn't look out of place as a student film. Leaden script, poor acting and a plot that never really gets going are just a few of the things that can be said. Caine is OK, but you get the feeling that the rest of the cast just don't care. In fact with better production values and a little more believable action this film could have been at least half-way decent. In the mid- to late-sixties there may have been a call for this type of film but not now. Then, it would have been slightly dangerous and risque, perhaps even exciting (then again perhaps not). Now it collects dust as it sits on the shelves of the local video outlet (really - it does!). The film is just a shadow of what could have been.

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.

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, one of them freebie CD's that you occasionally find - this one was part of the 'Michael Caine Collection' given away with some British newspaper once. Anyway i have spent all week watching the 1988 adaptation of 'Jack The Ripper' starring MC, so thought i would follow it up with this...

in defence of this movie, the plot is a bit daft, i agree, but it is a great experience to see Leslie Grantham and Caine acting for large periods of time in the same scenes. I also thought that the addition of that guy who plays the General in the Star Wars movies IV-VI was good too, as he is a largely underused actor, in my opinion.

so whilst i possibly agree the film is weak, the chance to see a few quality British actors together on camera is worth it. I also find it quite surprising that a big time actor like Caine would get caught up in such a trivial movie filmed in the UK. There was a reason for the Ripper TV movie, as it was a semi-investigative journalist type film to 'commemorate' (not sure if that is the best phrase to use) the 100 years since Jack The Ripper.

Read earlier here that someone wanted to know whether public schools like that exist. Well i studied music at a pre-1992 UK university and believe me - staff like that depicted in this film DO exist.