CAPITAL PUNISHMENT (TWIST)

No-one would dare dispute Michael Caine's place on the Hollywood A List.

It's been a long reign and with many iconic screen performances.

But sometimes it feels like there's two Michael Caines.

There's the double Oscar winning star of classics like 'Zulu,' 'Alfie,' 'The Italian Job,' 'The Man Who Would Be King',' 'Sleuth,' 'Get Carter,' 'California Suite,' 'Educating Rita,' 'Hannah and Her Sisters,' 'Mona Lisa,' 'Dirty Rotten Scoundrels,' 'The Cider House Rules,' 'The Quiet American,' 'Last Orders,' 'Youth' and Christopher Nolan's 'The Prestige,' his 'Dark Knight' trilogy and 'Inception'.

Then, there's the "collect your money and go" Michael Caine who appeared in such lamentable fare like 'The Swarm,' 'Beyond the Poseidon Adventure,' 'Jaws: The Revenge,' 'Water,' 'Bullseye' 'On Deadly Ground,' 'The Weather Man' and 'The Last Witch Hunter'.

Thankfully the quality and quantity of Caine's best performances has tended to smother the crud.

Unfortunately the Michael Caine on display in Sky Original Movies' 'Twist' appears to be the latter.

Directed by Martin Owen, 'Twist' attempts to be a "streetwise", "yoof", "dead chicken dot" adaptation of Charles Dickens' 'Oliver Twist' - sauntering about the small screen with all the Mockney swagger of a Guy Ritchie film.

Oliver as played by Rafferty Law, real-life son of Jude Law, is a London twentysomething graffiti artist living by his wits on the slick streets of the British capital city.

He spray paints tower blocks and likes to go to the National Gallery to gawk at the classics.

Sometimes he even sleeps there, when he is not camped on top of a tower block in his tent and often ends up getting chased by a security guard who is always on the lookout for him.

In a rather predictable preamble, we learn that Oliver's love of art was instilled at an early age by his dear old mum, Sally Collett's Molly Twist who died when he was barely over being a nipper.

Early on in Owen's film, Oliver spots a woman getting ticketed by Leigh Francis' rather unsympathetic jobsworth Warden Bumble and intervenes, resulting in him being pursued by the cops.

During the pursuit, he stumbles upon Rita Ora's streetwise yoof Dodge and Franz Drameh's Batesy who help him avoid being nicked by the Old Bill.

They bring them to their sweet hideout run by Caine's wily old codger Fagin, where, having lost his trousers and sneakers in the chase, Oliver is duly compensated for his troubles.

It isn't long before he is seduced by the prospect of a warm place to stay and a good feed of Fagin's pasta and falls in with the gang of street thieves.

Although Sophie Simnett's sassy gang member Red has quite a bit to do with that decision.

Soon Fagin is planning an elaborate, tech savvy heist on an old nemesis, David Walliams' art dealer Losberne.

But two things stand in his way - the rozzers represented by Noel Clarke and Jason Maza's Detective Sergeants Brownlow and Bedwin.

And then there's Lena Headey's psychotic Bill Sykes who is suspicious of Oliver, now known as Twist, from the off, believing him to be a rat.

Owen and his screenwriters Sally Collett and John Wrathall play fast and extremely loose with their reimagining of Charles Dickens classic novel.

Baz Luhrman showed with 'William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet' how sometimes giving a revered text a modern gloss can give it a new burst of energy.

Gil Junger's 'Ten Things I Hate About You' and Amy Heckerling's 'Clueless' also showed how you could just take the plot of 'The Taming of the Shrew' or 'Emma' and make it work in a contemporary setting in a modern vernacular.

Armando Iannucci's 'The Personal History of David Copperfield' showed how Dickens could be thrillingly reworked.

'Twist' comes nowhere near achieving that with a screenplay that would probably have been rejected within seconds by the Children's Film Foundation.

With its heavy reliance on scenes featuring Parkour - the acrobatic sport where people jump from rooftop to rooftop - and it's 'Lock, Stock' style brief freeze frames and camera swerves, 'Twist' is desperate to get down with the kids just like a vicar at a rave.

A misguided pilfering of Dickens' tale, it reimagines Fagin's gang of pickpockets as 'Ocean's Eleven' style scam merchants and robbers.

And its twist on 'Oliver Twist' also sees one of Dickens' greatest villains Bill Sikes change gender, with Lena Headey playing her as the 'Eastenders' character Pat Butcher doing a  impersonation of Ray Winstone while made up to look like the non-rockabilly version of Imelda May.

Saddled with some ear scraping dialogue, Law and Simnett make for very wooden lovers, with a lesbian twist thrown into the story "cos that what the yoof expect, innit?"

Ora and Drameh are irritating.

Walliams, Francis, Clarke and Maza are exactly what you expect - the latter two appearing, presumably, because they are producing.

As for Caine, well he just goes through the motions - mumbling pitifully.

All of this is very unconvincing - so unconvincing, in fact, that when blood actually is spilled, it looks like the aftermath of a very dull paintball fight.

With the exception of 'Hotel Mumbai,'  Sky Original Movies run of poor to middling films continues as Netflix and Amazon Prime pick off much better fare.

And you know a film is poor when you think David Walliams' performance might be the best thing in it.

That's a very, very low bar but it's also a wake-up call.

It's time to up your game, Sky.

('Twist' was released on Sky Cinema and on Now TV on January 29, 2021)

Lokasi:

Berbagi :