CASSANDRA'S DREAM - I see disaster! I see catastrophe! Worse, I see lawyers!

Contemporary London. Two working class brothers need cash desperately. Their successful Uncle Howard offers them a Faustian bargain. If they murder the man who is about to snitch on him, he will give them all the money they need. He couches his request in terms of family loyalty. One of the brothers, Ian, thinks he can pull it off, forget about it and enjoy the cash. The other brother, Terry, is troubled. What if he too turns snitch?

This makes for a promising intellectual thriller. How far would you go to get want you want? Could you really be a cold-blooded killer or would your conscience be troubled? But Woody Allen has nothing interesting or clever to say about these issues. His ethical discussion is trite - and he barely makes his invocation of the greek myth of Cassandra work. Contrast Allen's fatuous moral posturing with the moral profundity of Lumet's BEFORE THE DEVIL KNOWS YOUR DEAD.

CASSANDRA'S DREAM fails, then, as a moral treatise. It also fails as entertainment. Where is the bleak, cruel comedy of IN BRUGES? Or Allen's own CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS?

CASSANDRA'S DREAM also fails as a technical exercise. Philip Glass' orchestral score seems tailored to a different film - a costume melodrama perhaps? Vilmos Zsigmond's photography is pedestrian. Ewan McGregor's cockney accent seems like a pastiche of Frank Spencer in British cult comedy SOME MOTHERS DO 'AVE 'EM. Colin Farrell's superb performance is marred by the fact that his thick Irish accent keeps breaking through his Cockney accent. Sally Hawkins - again a brilliant actress - seems to be doing a watered down Poppy from HAPPY-GO-LUCKY. Hayley Atwell and Phil Davies are wasted in smaller roles, although Tom Wilkinson does get a cool cameo as the Machiavellian Uncle Howard. In short, barring Wilkinson, it's all pretty uninspiring.

I'm just a random amateur movie blogger. Woody Allen's a writer-director who has made films that are in the pantheon. So it seems a little arrogant to have written such an excoriating review. One can only hope that the rave reviews of his latest film restore our confidence in him.

CASSANDRA'S DREAM played Venice and Toronto 2007 and was released in 2007 in Spain, France, Greece, Finland, Turkey, Sweden, Belgium and Russsia. It was released earlier in 2008 in the US, Hungary, Denmark, Portugal, Norway, Canada, Italy, Estonia, Israel, Hong Kong, Mexico, Singapore, the Netherlands and Poland. It is currently on release in Brazil and the UK. It opens in Argentina and Germany on June 5th.

Mike Leigh retrospective - HIGH HOPES

After being involved in the successful "Play for Today" series of TV plays, Mike Leigh moved on to a feature film called HIGH HOPES. Leigh maintained his practice of gathering together a group of talented British character actors and improvising around themes of class conflict and real (as opposed to Hollywood-perfect) life. Leigh and his DP Roger Pratt depict late 1980s Britain as it really is - down at heel council flats, shambolic Victorian houses in the North of London and the occasion "fixer-upper" that has been transformed by people with a bit of money and some social aspirations. Against this suitably grimy backdrop, Leigh teases out the heart-break and drama in everyday situations.

In HIGH HOPES we have a loving but frustrated couple called Cyril and Shirley, played by the highly talented Philip Daviws and Ruth Shean. Cyril's a Marxist and, as such, in theory at least, a utopian. But in practice, Cyril is depressed by Thatcher's Britain and refuses to let his wife have a baby - the ultimate courageous and hopeful act. Shirley, by contrast, is a deeply warm and and loving persion, and is a socialist in a real sense - she cares about people and society. This manifests itself in this film by the fact that she actually listens to and cares for her ageing mother-in-law (Edna Dore) in sharp contrast to Cyril's sister and her brother in law.

The marital drama at the centre of this film, and the political question of translating abstract idealism into practical positive action are deeply compelling. I am less convinced by Leigh's handling of the class divide. His depiction of Cyril's sister Valerie (Heather Tobias) falls into the same trap as Beverly in ABIGAIL'S PARTY. Her costume, hair, accent and vocal inflections all cross the line of satire into crude caricature. The same goes for the characterisations of Cyril's mother's upper class neighbours. Despite the fact that Leigh has cast two superb character actors - Lesley Manville and David Bamber - he chooses to portray the rich neighbours as self-involved, superficial and cruel. There's no attempt to make three-dimensional characters. It's as if Leigh doesn't think the rich are worth the effort.

All in all, HIGH HOPES is a mixed bag. Cyril and Shirley's story is moving, thought-provoking, subtle and well-acted. Sadly it's surrounded by a wrapper of crude social caricature that once again feels like it's patronising the socially aspirant working-class and indifferent toward the upper= class.

HIGH HOPES was released in 1988 and won the FIPRESCI prize at Venice.