This movie gets it all wrong. After seeing too many switcheroo movies, author Anthony Shaffer has come to believe that if one reversal is good than a new reversal every ten minutes for over two hours must be genius. He has no insight or understanding of why a twist is satisfying. This movie is little more than an insipid, endless series of ruses and reversals. It doesn't build (except a viewers annoyance) and when the final twist arrives, the movie finally offers viewers some mercy and arbitrarily ends it there; but calling it quits forty minutes earlier would have been just dandy. It is a poorly adapted play, in that the characters never shut up and the film never does anything filmic. In another massive blunder, Shaffer was allowed to turn his own play into a script. He does so with a deeply impressed self-reverence.
Spoiler ahead:
If you think that even the stupidest viewer can't figure out that this piece of dreck only has two actors in it the whole time, you are a nerd. I was never surprised that the new character (serially introduced... duh!) was just Caine again. Each new gambit is a no-brainer. That the the two actors think the material is deep or well-suited for this hideous master-thespian treatment only makes the whole train wreck that much more unbearable. If they had filmed Olivier and Caine masturbating for two hours the results would have been a lot like this movie. I can only imagine that people who rave about this are frustrated actors who relish the idea of playing a part this self-indulgent. Every copy of this movie should be tracked down and pitched into a live volcano. I despise this movie. It is NOT a thoughtful movie. It's an assinine, dumb movie.
Caine also appears in the second most grating thriller mystery ever filmed: DeathTrap. For the record, the third is The Last of Sheila, a grating foray into the mystery genre from Stephen Sondheim.
Spoiler ahead:
If you think that even the stupidest viewer can't figure out that this piece of dreck only has two actors in it the whole time, you are a nerd. I was never surprised that the new character (serially introduced... duh!) was just Caine again. Each new gambit is a no-brainer. That the the two actors think the material is deep or well-suited for this hideous master-thespian treatment only makes the whole train wreck that much more unbearable. If they had filmed Olivier and Caine masturbating for two hours the results would have been a lot like this movie. I can only imagine that people who rave about this are frustrated actors who relish the idea of playing a part this self-indulgent. Every copy of this movie should be tracked down and pitched into a live volcano. I despise this movie. It is NOT a thoughtful movie. It's an assinine, dumb movie.
Caine also appears in the second most grating thriller mystery ever filmed: DeathTrap. For the record, the third is The Last of Sheila, a grating foray into the mystery genre from Stephen Sondheim.