Dead Fish (2005)

Great Film overall

Boring

Beautiful, moving film.

Tells a fascinating and unsettling true story, and does so well, without pretending to have all the answers.

I watched this movie on pay-per-view recently, which is what i do when i'm not sure if a movie is worth going to the theatre for/buying. I realised I wouldn't watch it if someone paid me to! The setting seems interesting - unlikely people getting mixed up with each other - the kind of storyline that you can make a really good comedy film out of. Which is why it's shocking how boring, pointless and NOT FUNNY the movie is. None of the actors came close to being convincing except for Elena Anaya, who played her role as Mimi very well, but then Mimi was pretty much a minor character. Virgil(Billy Zane) said his lines so slowly it makes you want to throw something at him. Andrew Lee-Potts as Abe did little more than run around with a constant expression of panic throughout the movie. But Robert Carlyle as Danny Devine was the height of unbearability. An annoying loud guy that pops up on the screen every 3 mins cribbing about his '****ing money' is enough to make you want to rip your hair out and bury yourself alive. And of course, what could be worse than a movie with a bunch of crazy characters, than a movie with a bunch of crazy characters that's NOT AT ALL FUNNY? But I definitely recommend this movie if you like 1. listening to people ranting all day 2. watching kinky scenes no matter how bad the rest of the movie is 3. Elena Anaya enough to not mind the torture of the scenes she is not in.

Sometimes it's a miracle how they can transform a potential good movie in a complete piece of crap. Dead Fish has everything in it to become a nice gangster-comedy, but fails miserably. You can't blame the casting, though. There are some excellent casted actors in roles that suit them fine. Robert Carlyle is superbly casted as greedy loan shark. Gary Oldman plays the role of messed up hit-man with verve. Terence Stamp has that eerie aura that makes his presence worth gold.But still, despite of all those good actors casted in suitable roles, the movie just doesn't surpass any mediocrity. It feels as if its writers just grabbed a couple of elements from other gangster flicks and threw it in an inspiration-less mixer. It doesn't help that some of the plot lines are just too unfunny for words. I was thoroughly annoyed by the conversations between Drakan and his English host. It just felt as an endless repeating of the same joke that wasn't funny the first time you heard it.Dead Fish has its moments, but lacks too much.

I should have known that it was about to suck when i read the words "A Movie just like snatch and lock, stock" on the DVD cover.The movie starts of funny (The first scene) but then slides worse and worse. It is a mix of badly thought up jokes and pointless killing (although i usually like that).The fact that the movie is all about a telephone switch.... Why not switch briefcases or so. (Never been done before) And could someone plz do something about the pot-smoking hippie. He is so annoying.We skipped chapters on the DVD, and still the movie was easy to follow. We missed the end (skipped one character too many and didn't even bother to go back).Save yourself the money and even more important the time and irritation.Don't watch.

This movie seems to aim at the same public as snatch would, but the movie doest't even come close to that.When we started to watch the movie my girlfriend said in the first view minutes "bad movie". I like to stay a little more optimistic in these cases but in this case it was false. You can't really get a grip on the movie. It does't take you trough the story.The worst is when the killer starts singing. I really was wondering WTF is going on now. Later on the killer again is talking about his love for the girl. Then I started feeling some sort of shame and hope he would't start singing again...It is not the worst movie i have seen but it really is not what I expected.