Bad film, worse acting

Rating: 1/10 (5 March 2010)

First. Daniel Day-Lewis is a ham of the first order. This man has about as much acting ability as my goldfish. Many years ago, an English journalist called Michael Green wrote a great comedy series which included 'The Art of Coarse Acting', which described the ludicrously inept activities of amateur actors in local companies who mostly acted in church halls or tents. On the basis of this bit of grimacing and wholly unconvincing twaddle. Day-Lewis would be lucky to get the part of Fifth Attendant Lord in Henry VI Part III in the Acton Player. From a reasonable start in 'Last of the Mohicans', he has had a Tarantino like vertical descent from good to garbage. Someone should explain that gurning and mugging are not actually acting. Goggling at the camera and talking in an accent no human has ever had do not constitute 'great acting'. Great acting is what goes on at the National Theatre on London's South Bank when Ralph Fiennes, Helen Mirren or Derek Jacobi turn up. It's what goes on frequently at other London theatres or Stratford when Vanessa Redgrave, Tamsin Greig, Julian Bleach and dozens of others go on stage. Second, this film is so ludicrously full of itself that it is an almost Ibsenesque parody. It opens up with a long, dull, 'who cares' sequence when no-one speaks. You are totally certain that something untoward is about to happen that you simply speculate as to what it is, and then laugh when you get it right. Instead of building tension, developing a feeling of otherworldliness, it simple draws attention to the fact that the useless director is trying very hard (and very unsuccessfully) to 'make a point'. Unfortunately, no-one cares what the point might be, the device is as unconvincing as a Henry VIII codpiece and deservedly draws as much despising humour. After about 40 minutes of this drivel, I gave up and wrote this. The DVD cost me GBP3. That was about GBP5 too much.