Chas is a London gangster who goes on the lam after he ignores advice from his boss and a personal vendetta gets out of control. He hides out in the Notting Hill Gate house of Turner, a strange, reclusive, bohemian musician with two girlfriends, and soon their hedonistic hippy quasi-philosophy starts to affect his wideboy personality.
This is an odd movie, which is either extremely clever or a load of drug-induced cobblers, and I can never make up my mind which. It doesn't really have much of a coherent plot, and the style is so freaky (jarring jump-cuts, lurid hand-held closeups, inaudible dialogue, near-subliminal images, static on the soundtrack, a sudden burst of animation, lots of complicated montage) that you could be forgiven for assuming both the editor and the sound-mixer were stoned (which they probably were). Equally unsettling is that it's really two pictures stuck together; Chas' kitchen-sink gangster drama that takes up the first half-hour, and then Turner's new-wave art film. It feels like a character from one film has accidentally wandered into another and can't get back. There are two aspects which make it highly watchable for me. One is Fox's performance, which is intermittently stunning - with his spiky red hair, tight clothes and thug stylings, he's a punk-rocker six years before punk-rock was invented. The second is just the sheer variety of experimental techniques (both cinematic and artistic) on view, which is pretty amazing in a major studio movie - in what other film can you see a bullet fired into someone's head from the bullet's point of view or have a scene where the leading lady injects peyote into her butt ? Both directors - writer Cammell and cameraman Roeg - are great visual stylists (Cammell was a great elusive director- he made a couple of good horror films after this, but then tragically committed suicide, much like Michael Reeves), there is an interesting eclectic soundtrack supervised by Randy Newman and there are good supporting performances from Shannon and Colley. However, whilst there is a lot to like in this film, I'm afraid I can't rate it that highly - it's good, but it's self-indulgent, lacks any kind of dramatic structure, and is frequently unnecessarily confusing. Compare it to A Clockwork Orange for example, made around the same time and with several similarities in theme. The Kubrick film is equally stylish and audacious, but is also timeless, elegant, highly influential, exquisitely put together, and a very moving story. Performance is a unique movie, but for me its excesses are no substitute for the basics of movie-making; drama, suspense, excitement and entertainment.
This is an odd movie, which is either extremely clever or a load of drug-induced cobblers, and I can never make up my mind which. It doesn't really have much of a coherent plot, and the style is so freaky (jarring jump-cuts, lurid hand-held closeups, inaudible dialogue, near-subliminal images, static on the soundtrack, a sudden burst of animation, lots of complicated montage) that you could be forgiven for assuming both the editor and the sound-mixer were stoned (which they probably were). Equally unsettling is that it's really two pictures stuck together; Chas' kitchen-sink gangster drama that takes up the first half-hour, and then Turner's new-wave art film. It feels like a character from one film has accidentally wandered into another and can't get back. There are two aspects which make it highly watchable for me. One is Fox's performance, which is intermittently stunning - with his spiky red hair, tight clothes and thug stylings, he's a punk-rocker six years before punk-rock was invented. The second is just the sheer variety of experimental techniques (both cinematic and artistic) on view, which is pretty amazing in a major studio movie - in what other film can you see a bullet fired into someone's head from the bullet's point of view or have a scene where the leading lady injects peyote into her butt ? Both directors - writer Cammell and cameraman Roeg - are great visual stylists (Cammell was a great elusive director- he made a couple of good horror films after this, but then tragically committed suicide, much like Michael Reeves), there is an interesting eclectic soundtrack supervised by Randy Newman and there are good supporting performances from Shannon and Colley. However, whilst there is a lot to like in this film, I'm afraid I can't rate it that highly - it's good, but it's self-indulgent, lacks any kind of dramatic structure, and is frequently unnecessarily confusing. Compare it to A Clockwork Orange for example, made around the same time and with several similarities in theme. The Kubrick film is equally stylish and audacious, but is also timeless, elegant, highly influential, exquisitely put together, and a very moving story. Performance is a unique movie, but for me its excesses are no substitute for the basics of movie-making; drama, suspense, excitement and entertainment.