Reviews

Some security workers form a plan to steal millions from the money they're transporting. One guy is not so into the plan, but with a bit of coaxing and persuasion, along with mitigating personal circumstances, he eventually agrees to it.

Now I don't think most people would be so haughty and judgemental as to take that to signify a black mark against these individuals. They worked hard, had hard lives, and really wanted a break and to live their dream lives. Who says that people always need to bend the knee and respect government no matter how unfairly they are treated by them? Maybe they would argue that they are owed the money, or it is their money, and why should their claim be any less valid or correct than one that the controlling body says? I thought we had a more educated, sophisticated population than that.

I'm not saying stealing this money is "okay", but just that there are some complex issues here, it's not all just black and white. The idea we're meant to just automatically consider taking it to be "wrong" is just ridiculous. I thought we had progressed from the "police = good, robber = bad" mentality, it's not always so simple. The government is not a god to be worshipped and they don't define morality.

In particular if you make a deal with someone and agree to do something, then you really should carry through with it. Otherwise you are a liar and a two-faced snitch. Okay, if he turned in all his friends and ruined their lives... that would be bad enough. But after he had sworn allegiance to them? This guy who messed everything up, betrayed his comrades, and he's supposed to be the hero?

He would have been better off just taking the damn money, everyone would have been happy, probably nobody would have ended up dead and there would be no movie. The corperations have screwed so many innocent people over over the years that they won't even notice the money is gone.

Seemingly to guard against feeling for the bad guys they had the robbers who were going ahead with the plan do some indefensible things. But you could see that this was really contrived, it didn't match the rest of the movie or their characters. It's insulting to robbers everywhere and all anti-government protesters, anarchists everywhere to paint them in such a picture. Just because they don't believe in the current corrupt system does not make them bad people. The guys seemed like normal, cool, fun guys.

The movie doesn't have anything else other than the above. There are no good action scenes, almost everything takes place in a bare warehouse. There were a couple of bizarre and totally unrealistic situations, such as the good guys gluing money to the window so that the guys outside wouldn't see what they were doing.

On the whole a rubbish movie. Jean Reno looks embarrassed to be in there as well he should.

Two twins come to their uncle's house, they are both beautiful but one turns progressively evil...

The imagery can be really beautiful at times. However they should have had more images of the beautiful girls, and more sex and nudity because of the themes involved. It's unfortunate that British movies restricted themselves in such a way. Some of the ideas they had were quite good. I was just waiting for things to really get started.

It's still a good movie, but predictable and at times boring. There were no twists or turns in the movie... the obvious switching of one twin for another does not count as a twist. Some of the dialogue was very much filler.

But there was no excitement, nothing to get my heart racing. When near the end they said they were going to march on the count's castle then I didn't even need to watch the rest... I knew what it would be like.

That isn't an actual quote from the movie, but the quotes ran very similar to it. I think it sums up much of the morality and preachiness in the movie.

The film starts out pretty well with Mary Shelley and two of her colleagues in a large room with a terrible thunderstorm outside. I actually found this part of the movie kind of interesting, unlike a lot of the rest of it.

Some of the scenes are really good, the actors are great for what what have to work with. Ernest Thesiger plays a BRILLIANT mad scientist and is really convincing in it and enjoyable to watch. Colin Clive also plays a great role as "Henry Frankenstein" (the monster's creator in this movie), and I liked all of the actors EXCEPT for Karloff, who does nothing but grunt and act like an uninspired ape. I'm not blaming the actor, but it's hard to play a good inanimate object. But the main three performers (Elizabeth, Henry, Dr. Pretorius) are all very good melodramatic actors.

Frankenstein is more Sci-Fi/Dystopian rather than horror. It has always been about feelings, the perils of playing with science, and nobody who knows the story will expect to be scared by the monster himself (even though he does nonchalantly kill in the film). But I just didn't feel anything in this film, it was far too simple. I 100% didn't buy into any of it at all, I thought it was absurd.

The imagery in the film is fine, the visuals that you can see for example in the action sequences are of a very high standard at times. The opening scene images are great. They're not mindblowing or anything though. Too much time in the movie is dedicated to "cutting edge" film technology, such as driving up the machine near the end and even that of the little people (which is an okay clip but has no real meaning at all for the film, it's as though they just threw it in). I'm sorry but the cutting edge of film "effects" of 1935 aren't likely to impress people in 2010, we've seen it all before and if they last too long the clips become very tiresome. A big lever and a few lights may have been enough to impress the audiences back then but not today!!! But overall I'm generally positive about the imagery, it's the plot, dialogue and pacing that destroy it for me.

At one point in the film Frankenstein goes to a blind man and the blind man tells him he is so lonely and he wants him to be his friend. I don't mind the idea of it, but this scene went on and on and on for about 15 minutes! (or at least what seemed that length of time). Frankenstein is afraid of fire, and the man keeps telling him "no, no, it's okay, fire can be good".

Blind or not, what kind of an old man just accepts a stranger into his home like that and treats him like an old friend? It would scarcely be believable if the guy was normal and explained his story to him, but as it is, with him having to explain to him that fire is okay, I just cannot believe it.

Frankenstein speaks "tarzan" English, it is like listening to someone talking to someone who cannot speak English or a man from an indigenous tribe. Imagine the frustration involved in trying to speak with that person and you'll get some idea of the ludicrousness of his dialogue.

The plot doesn't go anywhere! The whole point of the movie revolves around them making a bride for Frankenstein. Then no sooner is she made she rejects him and the movie ends. Frankenstein VERY unrealistically blames Dr. Pretorius and cruelly kills him in the end saying "We belong dead.". This is ridiculous because Frankenstein had only been helped by Pretorius, even though he appeared "evil" to us, not to Frankenstein. At the very start of the film they think Henry is dead and are mourning him, but he suddenly wakes up for no apparent reason and there's no mention of it ever again. What the hell was the point of that?!

This movie had a lot of potential with great acting and even some great scenes. They could have kept a lot of it, scrapped Frankenstein talking, scrapped the vast majority of the blind man scene and had the rest of the movie with Frankenstein and his Bride having sex and being caught by one of the villages who thought it was an act against God. Then them being cruelly chased with Henry Frankenstein trying to stop them but to no avail. The end could have them eloping together on a ship for "new lands" or something, with the evil Dr. Pretorius involved nefariously some way in that.

This movie had a LOT of wasted potential. The opening and the first 30 minutes or so had some great stuff in it. There were numerous ideas we've seen before there, but they were done in a really good and compelling way. The start of this movie was for me one of the best starts to any horror movie.

The characters were appealing and had a lot of potential, the acting was quite good, the imagery was brilliant at times (not in the death scenes though)... the grim view of the kids with the pickaxes in the dark of the night would send a shiver down anyone's spine. So what happened, where did it all go wrong? Unfortunately, the problem was that not much happened at all.

They got the start done fine, but it seemed to drag on and on throughout the film. There were a lot of really intriguing questions coming up, such as what would happen in the story about the "imaginary" friend of the young girl. But it seemed as if 2/3rds of the way through the film the mother was still looking at those pictures from the mines and still thinking about how weird everything/everyone was... that's what you do for the opening of a movie. By the end she was still looking at those pictures, there was nothing to piece together, those were the kids, the kids that were killed. Where's the big mystery? Where's the plot twist?

There was only about 3 death scenes in the entire movie and you saw very little of them. It would have been some magnificent imagery to see the kids pickaxing a guy to death like they had to hack at the mines... they had some really good blood in the movie, the director was definitely competent judging from the rest of the movie... but whyyyy didn't they have MORE?!?! I mean let's take the case of that guy that went out of the car first, we don't even know what really happened and how he miraculously got pulled away... why couldn't the other guy in the car roll over him or something? I think that would have been a great idea.

There was nothing fleshed out, nothing happened in the plot. They had all these great ideas for an opening and then never followed them through. The movie seemed to just get worse and worse as it went on, I really hated the ending, it made my blood run cold and curdle up inside me... and not in a good way.