From the Archives: Fool’s Gold

A dive into the pre-Talking Movies archives reveals a true nadir that may well have inspired the mending of his ways that became the McConnaisance.

It’s rare that a film can cause vitriol to dry up, but this film fails so comprehensively that it is hard to know where to begin. So I shall start with accents, to groan hereafter at everything else. Donald Sutherland is meant to be British and so intermittently adopts the sort of plummy accent used by toffs in the 1950s, the rest of the time he uses his normal accent. Why he is in this film is a mystery. We should all thank God that he accepted the great role of Tripp Darling in Dirty Sexy Money which should keep him too busy for the foreseeable future to do dreck like this. Ewen Bremner is meant to be Ukrainian which he plays by adopting the sort of super-Scottish accent which English people have always thought sounded rather Polish. Ray Winstone meantime is distractingly trying to hide his cockney inflections behind a Kentucky Fried accent.

Matthew McConaughey tries his damndest to do his best Owen Wilson impersonation but fails miserably while Kate Hudson who is at least semi-conscious has the good grace to look miserable throughout in obvious shame at having stooped so low for the sake of an easy paycheque. To say this film fails is to state the obvious. It’s not a romantic comedy or an action adventure or any combination of the above. Its tone veers wildly and it appears to be terminally confused as to whether it’s pitching for a 12s audience or a 15s audience. There are only three laughs in the entire film. Two of which are provided by Kate Hudson hitting annoying men very hard with blunt objects. First she knocks out McConnaughey with a walking stick (more of that sort of thing!) and then nearly castrates the uber-annoying walking cliché gangsta rappa with a well aimed shovel blow while on a motorbike. The third act offers some perfunctory satisfaction as various plot machinations finally click but this is a thoroughly disheartening experience.

What really baffles is how all concerned could have gone through a whole film-shoot making something they knew to be rubbish. Did no one have the guts to stand up and demand an on-set rewrite to inject some good lines into the mechanically plotted proceedings at least?

0/5