Crimetime (1996)

Sorry, this movie sucks

While it is a pity that the story wasn't told with more visual finesse, this is trivial compared to our real-world problems. It takes a good movie to put that into perspective.

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

There are many reasons to watch this movie.One is not to appreciate the acting, or plodding direction, but to see how badly a film can date.1996 does not seem that long ago to me, but after seeing this, it feels like 1985, because of the costumes and the sets, it dated the moment it was printed.It's Natural Born Killers light, Baldwin re-enacts Postlethwaites murders on the titular programme, and the more murders there are, the more famous and involved Baldwin becomes.It's an interesting concept, visual media wanting crime to carry on in order to boost ratings, but it's handled so poorly. Sluzier hit the jackpot with 'The Vanishing' but here he seems like he has given up on the whole movie business.Postlethwaite is as reliable as ever, and Baldwin proves again, he is the third most popular in the family business.It's a little overlong, and the ending feels a bit rushed, but there is something unique in the movie and the story trying to get out, which is a shame, because this is a cracking concept.

It may appear that I was lording it over all commentators, that it was I and not they who was brilliant enough to write this or any script. NO!!! And a thousand times NO!!! My lording it is ONLY over those who hysterically criticised the film and not those who saw good things in it. And please ..... have a little sense ..... a first time screenwriter is not at all powerful enough to force a bad screenplay on the financiers/producers etc. They made me write about ten scripts until I got what they thought was right. Crimetime was meant to be a funny/clever/ nasty little slasher movie and I think the producers and financiers were afraid of that - the video nasty scare was still in the air and they hadn't the guts to understand what the public wants. I'm afraid the acting with the exception of Pete and that wonderful actress playing the waitress(I'm serious!) wasn't what I wanted at all. Bobby was meant to be an utterly normal nice guy not the brooding presence that Baldwin was from word go. Finally read the Sight And Sound review (1996) for a less hysterical view that my detractors (one even criticised me for only having written German TV films!!!!).

OK, I agree it is not the great film it could have been, but we have to accept that the problem is not the film itself but the script. The film contains everything to be a hit: nice story, good plot and well done characters, even its soundtrack is excellent.Some people say the problem is the lack of deep characters, but since when this art is made only with characters? most of them represent nothing but emotions, in other words, they are symbols the writer and the director use to say something...The film is trying to establish an atmosphere of uncertainty; the big real problem is that the movie is trying to show too many different things, but it can not do so.Watch it and then judge by yourself.

The basic idea for this movie was good, but there was no real character development and the pacing was slow. Maybe because I saw it in a sloppily edited, pan&scanned video version ? (It went straight to video in France.)