John M Upton CONTAINS SPOILERS - NOT THAT YOU ARE MISSING MUCH MIND! There are good bad movies and there are bad bad movies. Then there are British made totally unintelligible straight to video vehicles such as this codswallop.The plot - for want of a much better word and assuming you can find it that is - basically concerns Michael Caine's dodgy violent armed robber working for an equally dodgy but well connected gentleman (played with slimy smoothness by Edward Fox) in order to lift a van load of banknote paper which we later see, appears to be transported around in the most insecure high security van I have ever seen!! The instrument by which the plot circulates around is something to do with hitting the van when it is in a radio black spot that has been amplified by some steel scaffolding on the nearby cathedral – any science student will tell you this plot device is a load of cobblers for a starter.Along the way as the film plod very slowly onwards we meet some paper thin cardboard cut out henchman including Leslie Grantham who plays the angry cockney wide boy from the east end of London who provides the muscle for the robbery – in other words exactly the same role he plays in pretty much everything he has ever appeared in so no typecasting there then…..The script is woeful, the plot almost non existent and the supposedly inter-weaved storyline about the large choirboy, his rather unpleasant mates and the girl he fancies is completely pointless and irrelevant, making up a large part of the film that should have been jettisoned at the first script read through as it would never have been missed.The clichés are free flowing pretty much throughout. Be it the hilarious meeting of Michael Caine and his employer around a picnic table in the middle of what looks suspiciously like a disused cement works in deepest darkest Surrey or Grantham's stereotype cockney villain.Along the way we also encounter an escort girl who adds nothing to the story whatsoever except she is nice to look at, some quite nice scenery and actually some decent camera work.However the heist itself which supposedly is meant to be at the centre of the story takes ages to eventually turn up, is handled badly, has huge plot holes you could drive a bus through and quite frankly the tarted up cheap and cheerful ex British Gas van is not fooling anyone! Also for such a high security cargo, you would expect at least to find a) an armed Police escort and b) a much sturdier van than the second hand rust bucket that this film's budget seemingly only just managed to stretch to.I can only assume the quite stellar cast were in desperate need of the cash, they certainly would not have done this film to win any awards except maybe a golden raspberry.And for their efforts, this rubbish that was already old and dated when it was made, lurked on a shelf unreleased for years and then went straight to a £1 DVD release in the 'Cheap Tat' section of my local supermarket!!

jasesaun This film is a poor example of how bad British Film-making can be. This was given to me free with my DVD player and it is the biggest waste of money I have never spent in my life. It looks like it was made in the 1980's and imagine my disbelief when I found out it was it was only filmed in 1998. I do despair that people willingly parted with their money to fund this dire waste of film stock. It is an embarrassment to all those people involved in the making, funding, acting and the viewing public.The only good thing about this film is that the DVD does make a fantastic coaster.Please, if I only do one right thing in my life, it should be to warn you. Do not watch this film.

Popey-6 This really wouldn't look out of place as a student film. Leaden script, poor acting and a plot that never really gets going are just a few of the things that can be said. Caine is OK, but you get the feeling that the rest of the cast just don't care. In fact with better production values and a little more believable action this film could have been at least half-way decent. In the mid- to late-sixties there may have been a call for this type of film but not now. Then, it would have been slightly dangerous and risque, perhaps even exciting (then again perhaps not). Now it collects dust as it sits on the shelves of the local video outlet (really - it does!). The film is just a shadow of what could have been.

jhs39 Dull and frequently inept caper film is never suspenseful and often seems to make little sense. Caine is a veteran criminal who kills numerous people, seemingly for no other reason than to show what a dangerous bastard he is and to make the audience fear for the life of a chubby kid that the movie keeps cutting to. Film stars out with said chubby little boy stumbling across a van with blood dripping out of the back. Caine pops up. warns the boy menacingly that he didn't see a thing, gives him a twenty pound note and sends him on his way. The boy promptly goes to school and tells everyone he comes into contact with what he saw, but since he's prone to exaggeration and tall tales nobody believes him. Of course, since there's no indication that Caine cleaned up the crime scene and since the film takes place not in a big city but in a more remote part of England, you would think something would turn up to corroborate the boy's story. Things just get worse from there. Initially the scenes in Shadow Run seem so disconnected I thought the director was filming out of order ala Pulp Fiction. Nope. Michael Caine's character is at the heart of what's wrong with the movie: he's a vet thief that who seems to kill someone in cold blood every twenty minutes or so. At one point he admonishes a confederate in the next job for trying to figure out a way to pull off the robbery without killing any innocent people. What kind of thief wants to kill if it isn't necessary? If Caine were some twenty year old hothead you might be able to buy it, but a man in his late sixties? It hardly seems likely that Caine's character would live as long as he has or that anyone would want to work with or hire such a psycho. His character isn't believable and neither is this boring and dreadful film.